


Temperature

by arroways



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Hospital, Alternate Universe - Medical, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Background Relationships, Canonical Character Death, Doctor/Patient, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Female Ejaculation, Implied Past Relationships, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Masturbation, Mating, Mating Bites, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Medical Kink, Minor Finn/Rose Tico, Minor Poe Dameron/Finn, Minor Violence, Past Darkpilot, Past Relationship(s), Scenting, Squirting, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, everyone in space is either bi or pan which means everyone here is the same, mentions of polyamory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-05-09 02:01:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14707002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arroways/pseuds/arroways
Summary: Rey Niima goes into her first heat when she's twenty-four years old.---There’s a moment where his gaze softens as he approaches the gurney, where he looks down to her, and it’s the most bizarre thing, because this doctor she doesn’t know, this Alpha she’s never met, leans down slightly and wipes a tear away.When he realizes what he’s just done, he shakes his hand as if he’s burned it, and apologizes to her, unable to meet her eyes.It’s all just biology, after all. Alphas nurturing Omegas. Particularly the ones in heat.





	1. Doctor, Doctor

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my incredible beta, [Becca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oscillateswildly/profile). Thank you for being my cheerleader, for keeping me in check, and inspiring me to keep going and keep writing this trash.
> 
> Expect updates to this on a weekly basis. Not sure I'll have a specific day I post, but like my last WIP (Blame it on the Oxytocin), I plan on updating this AT LEAST once a week. You can always [follow me on Tumblr](http://arroways.tumblr.com) for updates, etc. :)
> 
> Thank you [spidermemes](https://spidermemes.tumblr.com/post/174070917693/reylo-fic-favs-temperature-by-arroways-theres) for [this incredible gifset/moodboard](https://spidermemes.tumblr.com/post/174070917693/reylo-fic-favs-temperature-by-arroways-theres) for this fic! <3

It happens as Rey is baking bread. She enjoys baking; it’s a few hours of clarity and peace in her otherwise hectic life. It’s her sanity. She wouldn’t even call herself a baker, she’s not particularly talented or anything like that. It’s just her calm place.

At first, she thinks it’s just the heat of the oven. She absentmindedly turns on an oscillating fan and goes back to cleaning the dishes.

Then it gets warmer. Her skin feels itchy. Her throat gets tight. 

She gets warmer and warmer. She feels a cold sweat cover her palms.

She’s had the flu before, she’s had colds. She’s had stomach viruses. 

This is vaguely like that, only it’s a strange echo of that. Yelling “hello” into a cave and hearing back “goodbye.”

She runs to the medicine cabinet and throws back two Advil, choking back water as she does so. Maybe that will do the trick. Her gut tells her to get real, the Advil won’t help at this point.

As the minutes pass, her legs begin to feel weak, and she tries to remember what she ate that day. Who she might have come into contact with at the demolition yard where she works.

Her vision begins to get blurry, and she stumbles over to the oven, turning it off, because she’s suddenly fearing the worst. If she passes out or something, she doesn’t want the oven to burn down her home. Her safe place.

She’s a Beta. She’s a Beta. This isn’t what she thinks it could be. And yet at the back of her neck, where there’s that mysterious gland, that patch of pale brown skin, the one she’s had all her life, that has perplexed doctor after doctor, it aches now. 

But maybe it’s a flu. Maybe it’s a mystery virus. All she knows is she feels painfully empty, and painfully warm, and wants so desperately to crawl out of her own skin. She wants to be anywhere but fucking  _ here _ , in her own body. 

Rey’s eyes brim over with tears as her she dials the emergency number on her cell phone.

She pants, trying to find her voice as the dispatcher attempts to coax her through her fear and uncertainty. 

“I don’t know, my temperature has spiked, I’m home alone, my vision is blurry, I’m really sick…” she whimpers into the phone as she curls up on the cold floor of her kitchen in the fetal position. 

“Emergency services are on their way, ma’am.”

* * *

Rey Niima has made it through the first twenty-four years of her life through sheer luck and by the skin of her teeth. She likes to think she’s resourceful, she likes to think she doesn’t take any shit, but she still has a soft spot for fixing what can’t be fixed. She’s painfully hopeful and optimistic, she’s been told. Annoyingly so. It didn’t match up with her past, apparently. Shouldn’t she be more troubled? Shouldn’t she be more of a tortured artist type?

When she had been maybe three or four years old, her parents had dumped her at a fire station. She doesn’t remember much, but she does remember crawling into a fire truck and sitting in the big empty seat, watching the firemen come into work for the day.

The firemen weren’t angry when they found her, just confused. Concerned, maybe. Until that point, she hasn’t known affection or what it was like for an adult to show her concern.

She’s been dumped with a horrific foster family, with an overweight, bearded, sweaty patriarch aptly named Plutt, and even now, years after she had been legally emancipated, she still found herself working in his shitty junkyard. She owed him, he said. She was nothing without him. 

A small part of her believed him. Even though he was just a mere Beta with a power complex. 

Another part of her told her to get out of dodge, get away from this guy who had been objectively awful to her for the past twenty years of her life. 

But then again, what if her parents came looking for her through the system? What if they came to Plutt, and she wasn’t there?

_ What if? _

* * *

The emergency medical technicians load her into the back of an ambulance with quite a lot of difficulty.

“How old are you?” one of them asks offhandedly as they settle into the back of the truck. This is information they could find on her ID card that she’s handed them, but maybe the woman is trying to make small talk. Maybe trying to ground her, because Rey is clearly in an incredible amount of discomfort. Her hands fist the scratchy sheets of the cot beneath her.

“Twenty-four,” Rey gasps out, as a pang hits her belly. It – it isn’t pain, precisely. That’s the confusing part. Her eyes widen in surprise. She feels like she’s just wet herself, although she’s so sure that can’t be the case…

The EMT eyes the damp cot, the wet patch forming on the fabric between Rey’s legs.

“Ma’am, you’re designated as a Beta,” the technician states as he glances at her ID. “You know it’s a federal offense to mislead –”

“No, no I know, I thought – I mean I am, I went years without – I don’t –” Rey’s breathing rises rapidly. 

Hundreds and thousands of years ago, heats began when Omega individuals were in their early teens; Alphas began their ruts around the same time as well. 

This was mostly due to evolution, and short lifespans. Back in the sixteenth century, pairs were mated by the age of sixteen or seventeen, and due to disease and warfare, the average lifespan had been around thirty or forty years.

As time went on, customs changed. People began to live longer, and traditional methods of reproduction shifted. Evolutionary biology took note. The average age of a first heat for an Omega these days was seventeen or eighteen, give or take. That was just the average, and very rarely did you find an Omega going into heat past the age of twenty-two.

Yet here she is, and every part of her, every single fucking part of her, aches longingly and feels mind-numbingly empty.

“Fuck,” she states, at the realization, as it washes over her and also in response to the painful, desperate  _ arousal _ that has begun to creep up her thighs, up her stomach, up her chest, clawing its way at her skin and neck, nestling deep into the base of her brain. 

When Rey’s eyes open once more, her pupils have blown wide and she feels practically feral. 

So,  _ this _ is what a heat feels like. She’d always wondered.

* * *

She must have been sedated, she must have been panicking, because she’s in and out of consciousness. Her head is spinning, and she’s not sure if she’s just panicked, at this point.

She feels a sharp jab in her arm, she hears words like  _ sedative, solitary confinement… _

She’s rushed through the sliding doors of the hospital’s emergency department on a gurney, and her memories of this part are choppy at best. The EMTs are calling in a code and she’s thrashing on the plastic beneath her.

There’s the overwhelming scent of an Alpha, smelling of sandalwood and freshly baked bread and new rainfall and forests, who’s approached her rolling gurney, his brow furrowed. His hair is dark beneath a light green surgical cap. She sees a mole on his neck and considers jumping up from the gurney and sinking her teeth into the pliant skin there.

The Alpha doctor begins to shout, anger and panic clear on his face. “This is a designated Alpha/Beta hospital! You can’t just bring her in here! For the safety of the sick patients! What the fuck were you thinking?” He pulls a face mask over his mouth and nose as he yells at the emergency technicians, who are mumbling about following protocol and her Beta-designated ID card.

The delicious smelling Alpha ER physician is barking orders, pointing her gurney down a hallway, and she squirms in his presence, gripping her thighs tight together. Even sedated, his scent is overwhelming, and she leans towards him. She whimpers out loud, tears coursing down her cheeks. 

There’s a moment where his gaze softens as he approaches the gurney, where he looks down to her, and it’s the most bizarre thing, because this doctor she doesn’t know, this Alpha she’s never met, leans down slightly and wipes a tear away. 

When he realizes what he’s just done, he shakes his hand as if he’s burned it, and apologizes to her, unable to meet her eyes. 

It’s all just biology, after all. Alphas nurturing Omegas. Particularly the ones in heat.

She knew the general history of all this. The general customs. For the most part, Omegas and Alphas had become biologically obsolete. Sure, they made up a good chunk of the population, but customs had changed. 

The idea of  _ mating _ was considered antiquated. Betas now made up the majority of the population, around seventy percent. Additionally, even now, Alphas didn’t necessarily  _ need _ to help an Omega through their heat, thanks to advances in modern medicine.

And then that thought follows through, the truth settling deep in the pit of her belly, the realization – is she  _ really an Omega _ ?

* * *

She wakes up in a quiet hospital room, IV tubes leaking out of her left arm.

“Where am I?” she croaks out, her eyes adjusting to the harsh fluorescent lighting.

The angry attending Alpha ER doctor from before is standing far, far away from her. With a face mask on. 

“You’re our patient,” he says, maybe with some attempt at humor. She truly can’t tell. His face is unreadable.

“Is this really necessary?” she asks hoarsely, looking down at the IVs in her arms and the beeping monitors. “I’m not really  _ sick _ now, am I?”

There’s also no hiding her embarrassment. She can only imagine how she, an Omega in heat, smells to this poor man. Her skin flushes as she tries to retreat into the bedding beneath her.

“It is quite necessary,” he states. “Ma’am, we’ve been running a few panels, and I’m wondering if I could get a quick medical history from you.”

She cringes at the way he says ma’am, then rolls her eyes. “It would be futile.”

“Excuse me?”

“I grew up in the system, so I don’t know much about –"

“Oh, no. I mean, environmental history. You’re well past the age most Omegas begin to present. It’s not uncommon, but it is extremely rare for us to receive an Omega in her twenties.” His voice is almost gentle when he looks down at his clipboard and finally asks, “Were you malnourished as a child? Or subject to any unordinary stress?”

She laughs out loud, at that. He looks up to meet her eyes abruptly. She giggles a bit. “That’s the understatement of the year. But yes, I was.”

He makes a note in her chart. “Like I said, not uncommon.”

He’s particularly blunt with all of this. She also knows literally anyone else could probably interrogate her like this. He had come personally. 

When Rey hit the age of twenty-two with no heat in sight, a doctor had written off the strange gland at the back of her neck as a quirk, an anomaly, and she had officially registered as a Beta. Still, she would sometimes look in the mirror, at the gland usually found on the necks of, well,  _ Omegas _ , and wonder.

She’s distracted by another pulsing, dull ache throughout her body. “Am I still in –”

She can only imagine what the scent of her in heat would do to an Alpha post-surgery. Or any Alpha in recovery, really. She suddenly feels incredibly guilty and ashamed to be here, in this particular hospital. Why haven’t they transferred her yet? They have hospitals just for Omegas and their individualized needs.

“You are, but we’ve sedated you, and separated you from any of our more – impressionable – patients. It will be uncomfortable, but you’ll be okay.”

She grimaces. Who’s he to say she’s okay? He’s not in her body right now. “So I can’t just go home, if we know what this is?” she asks. She doesn’t want to say it out loud.  _ Heat. _

He tilts his head at her, tapping his clipboard. “I’m going to be blunt, Miss Niima. Do you have someone at home, or in your support network, who can assist you through this first heat of yours?”

Assist? Does he mean  _ fuck  _ her through it? Or, pat her forehead with cold washcloths and feed her soup?

She closes her eyes, thinks of her friends and coworkers. They wouldn’t understand, would they? Maybe they would. But everything is about to change. The way they see her. The way she lives her life.

She dejectedly shakes her head in response to his question.

“It will be uncomfortable, but you won’t be alone here, and we’ll have social workers in soon to help you through this transition.”

He adjusts his face mask once more over his nose and mouth, and she notices she can’t really smell him, now. Not like before. She wonders what that’s about.

She realizes she doesn’t even know his name.

* * *

It’s only been a few hours. Rey can’t help it. She slams her hand down on the emergency call button, writhing in the sheets of her hospital bed.

A Beta nurse sympathetically comes to her rescue, laying a cool washcloth on her forehead. 

“Is there anything – I just – I need something –” Rey begins to cry. She feels pathetic, embarrassed, ashamed, and empty. She feels her thighs soak, slick and hot. She rubs them together. She wants them to tie her up and inject her with a tranquilizer and let her sleep this off.

The nurse purses her lips. “Oh darling, I wish there was more I could –”

Rey snarls, baring her teeth at the nurse. “Get that doctor back in here. The Alpha.”

The words come out of her mouth before she can process what she’s asking, before she really understands. Her feral brain wants one thing, one thing only. 

“Alpha, I need an Alpha,” she moans. She doesn’t even know what she’s asking for. It’s some primal need from deep within her.

Her eyes scrunch up and she whimpers helplessly. She’s never  _ felt _ like this before. If this is what it’s like on sedatives, fuck her six ways to Sunday when she gets out of here and deals with the unmedicated version. 

The Beta nurse soothes her, petting her head. 

* * *

“The doctor prescribed this for you,” the Beta nurse announces a few hours later, walking into the room with what looks like –  _ holy fucking hell _ .

“The doctor prescribed me a sex toy?”

The nurse doesn’t blush, simply nods, as if this is the most normal thing to happen in her hospital. “Essentially. It’s pretty common in situations like these, there’s no need to be ashamed.”

Rey’s  _ cunt _ is clenching down on nothing, desperate for something, anything, and well, at this point…

The nurse leaves Rey to her own devices, thank god. She’s not sure she could handle the embarrassment. 

In an effort of extra privacy, Rey hobbles up and pulls the curtains shut around her bed.

She slides back under the itchy sheets and pulls the covers up over her. She places the glorified dildo between her legs and takes a deep breath.

Rey has never really felt the need to attempt any sort of penetrative sex, whether by herself or others. Or any type of sex, really. So she’s never fucked anyone, so what? Sure, she had occasionally attempted to touch herself. She had just never felt the overwhelming desire to do, well, much of anything else. She’d had bigger fish to fry, growing up. 

She brushes the thoughts of her former celibacy away as she presses the cold plastic to her center and begins to push in.

Somehow, miraculously, surprisingly, against all odds or expectations she had for this, it slides in so fucking easily. In theory, she knew she must be wet. She knew Omegas had an affinity for… well, lubricating themselves. She had taken health in public school. She got the gist of all this. 

Yet this, as she cries out and the cold plastic of the toy fills her, this is  _ not enough.  _

She begins to cry as the toy doesn’t hit what she  _ needs _ . She cries as the toy does fuck all. It’s excruciating. The experience is only incrementally better than before.

She doesn’t know how long she attempts to fuck herself with the dildo. Her eyes are red with tears, her skin is flushed, and she’s just thankful for whatever drugs they have, because she bets this would be about a hundred times worse unmedicated.

She’s not sure how much time has passed, but at some point, the curtains are pulled back, and the fucking bane of her existence is back, that Alpha doctor.

“Isn’t there another doctor on call?” she yelps at him. It’s very clear what she’s doing under the sheets. She wants to still her wrist, the way it’s pumping between her legs, but frankly it’s the only thing keeping her  _ vaguely _ sane at this precise point in time. It’s better than nothing.

He presses his mask even closer to his face, his brows furrowing in what appears to be restraint, in concentration. His eyes travel down the bed, to where her limbs are moving beneath the sheets. He tears his gaze away to look at the clipboard in his hands.

“It’s the middle of the night, so no,” he deadpans. 

She exhales. “I’m not doing this right,” she tells him, her face red. She’s unable to meet his eyes now, and instead looks at the speckles in the ceiling tiles above her.

“I’m just doing rounds,” he tells her, but doesn’t step away. “I can get a nurse.”

“Doctor,” she inhales, terrified that he’ll leave her like this.

“Yes?”

“What do I do?” she pleads with the ceiling. 

The doctor doesn’t move from where he’s standing, far over there by the curtains. She still can’t smell him. She’s thankful for that, for now. 

He squares his shoulders, resigning himself. “Try it on all fours.”

Her eyes widen, and she tears her gaze from the ceiling to meet his dark brown stare. He looks ravenous, she decides. She can’t even see half his face. 

She’d like him to eat her whole.

“I – what?” she gasps out.

He sighs loudly; she can hear it through the mask.

“Insert the prosthetic into your vaginal canal using your dominant hand, while you’re on all fours, balancing on one of your forearms,” he instructs her. 

And she can’t help but follow his instructions as if she’s a marionette. Imaginary strings connected to her limbs follow his orders, and she’s doing as he says.

Is it because he’s in a position of authority? Is it because, as a doctor, she implicitly trusts him?

Or is it because as an Omega, she’s desperate to please this Alpha, and what he wishes of her?

“Why like this?” she moans into the mattress, the dildo hovering at her entrance. She’s waiting for him to leave. It’s taking an incredible amount of self-control, she’s fighting pure biology as she prevents her hand from plunging the toy back inside her.

“You’ll achieve a deeper sensation of penetration,” he states, and begins to back away. She’s still under the covers, but she’s sure her scent is overwhelming the room. 

As he begins to depart, she turns her head slightly. “Wait,” she calls after him, her voice slightly muffled by her forearm, and he pauses, his hand on the door handle. “I don’t know your name.”

He doesn’t turn back to look at her. “Dr. Solo,” he tells her, beginning to turn the handle and make a run for it. “Dr. Benjamin Solo.”


	2. Give Me the News

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She has a moment where she realizes that’s a thing she has to worry about now. Like she had realized earlier. Smell. Scent. Everyone had scents. Even Betas. Alphas developed their keen sense of smell, and their ability to scent, with their first rut. Omegas with their heats.
> 
> And last night, she had smelled that Alpha doctor. Boy, had she smelled him. 
> 
> Is that what all those Ancient Greek poems and obscurely worded Victorian novels had talked about? Is that what the fuss was about when it came to scent?
> 
> She understands it now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to [t0bemadeofglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/t0bemadeofglass/pseuds/t0bemadeofglass) and [oscillateswildly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oscillateswildly/profile) for helping me survive this chapter and keeping me sane. I am #blessed
> 
> NOTE: There's some heavy stuff in this chapter around the world building. There are some parallels to the state of actual healthcare in the United States. It's a way for me to vent, but this isn't supposed to be a serious commentary. If you have concerns about how I've handled some of these issues, please feel free to chat with me on Tumblr.

**** Rey finds herself eternally grateful for the doctor’s advice. She’s too appreciative to feel any semblance of embarrassment. 

Yet.

It’s just... she never thought she would have to ask an attending physician in a hospital for any type of masturbatory guidance.

Although, she does know there are entire subsets and specialties of medicine dedicated entirely to Omega sexuality and health. She’s vaguely aware of a government initiative requiring medical professionals to undergo sensitivity training by law, and it’s naturally all part of the medical school curriculum.

Nothing Dr. Solo had done was out of the ordinary for a lone attending emergency room physician dealing with a desperate new Omega in heat at three in the morning.

The plastic toy isn’t ideal, but in the directed position, she is able to achieve a series of lackluster orgasms. The first ones of her life. Before this, her half-hearted attempts with her fingers on her clit had left her wholly unsatisfied. She’d say she was ecstatic about this new development, but it leaves her feeling like she has an itch she still can’t quite reach. Nothing to write home about. The whole situation remains emotionally distressing. But it tides her over and is an overwhelming improvement from before. 

And gratefully, at some point, Rey is able to drift to sleep.

* * *

Her heat dreams could be kindly described as a clusterfuck.

It vaguely reminds her of the one time she had the flu with a fever of a hundred and four.

Only these dreams are distinctly more HBO late-night special. 

_ Large, calloused hands, pinning her wrists down to a forest floor. She blinks, looking up at the sunlight beaming through the tree canopy. She feels lips on her throat. She wants him to bite her. _

_ She’s never been properly fucked, so as her dream mate positions himself at her entrance, he fades away, and she tumbles down, forward, into a cavernous cave. _

_ She finds she can breathe underwater. _

_A creature approaches her from the depths, wrapping its inky, wet tentacles around her, around her neck. She leans into the embrace, her subconscious mind bizarrely okay with this development._

_ She blinks, and she’s on an operating table.  _

_ Dr. Solo, in a crisp white coat, looms over her. She can see only his piercing dark eyes above his mask. _

_ She writhes, her dreamlike sticky arousal coating the cold metal of the table beneath her. _

* * *

Scent. 

She had noticed how her perception of it had changed last night. How she interacted with scent was suddenly… a thing. A force to be reckoned with.

Her sense of smell had increased threefold. She could now smell everything and everyone. 

She hates how sterile the hospital smells. Her room smells acidic, and she feels her nostrils ache and burn.

She also distinctly remembers the shift from being able to smell that doctor when she had been on the gurney, to being unable to when he had come to her hospital room. 

Like something in her – or him – had been switched off.

Sometime after breakfast, when she’s served atrociously smelling dry eggs she can barely swallow, the fucking  _ cavalry _ arrives. She’s greeted by a new shift of doctors and nurses. 

They want her out of this hospital yesterday.

As she had witnessed firsthand last night, “her kind” are wholly unwelcome in a hospital designated for Alphas and Betas. 

Obviously, emergencies arise, but her days as a designated Beta were over. She absentmindedly wonders if she’ll need to take a new photo for her ID card. 

Healthcare these days for Omegas was a bit warped and in constant flux in Congress. More often than not, Alpha and Beta politicians thought they could regulate Omega healthcare. There was some sick fascination with Omegas, their sexualities and their reproductive capabilities. Funny though, how Alphas rarely underwent the same scrutiny or policing.

She sensed she was in for a rude fucking awakening. 

Particularly because some of those antiquated politicians thought that all Omegas should stay home with an Alpha during their heats. 

But it was up to the Omegas, wasn’t it? How they wanted to handle their heats? (At least, that’s how Rey had always seen it. Not that it had mattered to her before today.) If Omegas wanted to go at it alone, they should be able to. If they wanted an Alpha, or a Beta, to relieve that itch and pummel them mercilessly through it, they could find one.

It’s a vaguely modern society, but there were still a few kinks in the system. And not the fun sort of kink.

See, beginning in the late nineteenth century, heats were considered improper. It was all very sterile. The Victorians were quite repressed in this regard.

In the mid-twentieth century, there was an incredible amount of political unrest after activists revealed Omegas were corralled and placed in institutions. Rey had never really appreciated the importance of learning about all this in school. Now she’s glad she paid attention in history class.

“We’re transferring you to an Omega clinic,” a Beta social worker is explaining to her, walking her through necessary paperwork as Rey writhes uncomfortably on her cot. “By law, we can’t keep you at this hospital for longer than twenty-four hours, unless it’s a life-threatening case. Which you are not.”

Rey nods, frustrated yet understanding.

In the sixties, there were protests in the streets when it came out that Omegas, for decades, had been restrained and placed in padded rooms and malnourished as an attempt to suppress their heats.

The president at the time signed a bill into action: the beginning of deinstitutionalization for Omegas.

At least, that had been the idea. With the wars in the sixties and seventies, this really didn’t get done. The only saving grace was that fewer and fewer Omegas were born. It wasn’t until the eighties, after a handful of heated supreme court cases, did Omega healthcare really beginning to improve. The creation of Omega clinics made life infinitely easier, but brought a truckload of other issues.

The social worker becomes moderately sympathetic, sensing Rey’s unease and concern. “Your heats won’t always be like it is right now. It’s your first one, and you were caught off guard. You can take birth control, and there’s plenty of options to regulate your heat cycles and make them more bearable.”

She had a suspicion that ‘plenty of options’ meant not many options at all. And the ones that were there, were likely regulated. 

Fortunately, Rey lives in a reasonably liberal city. She knows that clinics were available to assist through difficult or new heats. They also provided general healthcare, including access to birth control. It was specialized care for a population that was growing smaller with each generation.

The hospital gives her a shot of an emergency, fast-acting blocker that will dull her heat and scent as they transport her.

She has a moment where she realizes that’s a thing she has to worry about now. Like she had realized earlier. Smell. Scent. Everyone had scents. Even Betas. Alphas developed their keen sense of smell, and their ability to scent, with their first rut. Omegas with their heats.

And last night, she had  _ smelled _ that Alpha doctor.

Boy, had she smelled him. 

Is that what all those Ancient Greek poems and obscurely worded Victorian novels had talked about? Is that what the fuss was about when it came to scent?

She understands it now.

The shot fatigues her, but she refuses a wheelchair. She can handle this. She’s determined to. 

A Beta nurse accompanies her, letting Rey use her elbow as support. “Nurse,” she turns, tentatively, as she’s escorted down a back hallway and out towards the ambulance bay to be transferred to the clinic.

The nurse looks at her expectantly. 

“Can you make sure that doctor from last night, Dr. Solo… knows? Can you tell him thank you?”

Frankly, she’s sure she’ll later be mortified by what had transpired. But she also knows it’s his job. He didn’t cross any lines. 

But these lines blur with Alphas and Omegas. Rey isn’t sure to what extent pheromones play in these interactions. She makes a mental note to look into this. It’s just never occurred to her. 

It hasn’t affected her life at all, prior to last night.

The nurse purses her lips and nods. “Surprising, but alright.”

Rey isn’t sure how to take that response (Surprising? What’s surprising?), but gets into the medical transport van, waving farewell to the nurse, who frankly looks relieved to be rid of her.

* * *

She settles into her temporary room at the clinic fairly easily. She’s not sure yet how long her heat cycle will last.

A brochure tells her the average is three to five days. It also informs her that current statistics estimate one in one thousand individuals is an Omega. Consequently, one in one thousand is an Alpha. 

She’s not sure she can properly wrap her head around that statistic. She knew Alphas and Omegas were fewer and far between in this day and age, but that meant there were only approximately 300,000 other Omegas in the United States alone.

Given the current societal obsession with their mating rituals (just look at PornHub) and sexual health, that sure is a small number. 

She hadn’t really cared, or considered it, until it affected her. 

“It’s going to be a transition,” a new social worker, a fellow Omega, tells her as Rey writhes on the bed and tries to suck down green Jello.

Rey exhales loudly. “Right.”

“You’re interested in birth control?” The social worker’s pen hovers above a box just begging to be checked.

Rey wonders why they have to do this now, while she’s practically wetting the bed and running a temperature about two degrees higher than normal. 

Some “truthers” claimed that birth control played a part in the low birth rates of Omegas these days. Communities were divided over this. Marches on the nation’s capital occurred yearly, begging lawmakers to protect Omegas and the future of our country. But why the obsession now that Omegas and Alphas are no longer integral to the survival of the species? 

“Yes, definitely,” Rey manages to grunt out in response to the question as she presses her thighs together. 

“Do you live with an Alpha, and are you concerned about your safety?”

Rey scoffs and shakes her head. She’d met maybe a grand total of seven Alphas in her entire lifetime. They tended to flock towards high-powered, more white-collared positions of employment, like lawyers and doctors. So no, they weren’t individuals she came into contact with regularly.

She is also still in a state of constant, unbearable arousal. Did they  _ really  _ have to do this little interrogation right now?

Couldn’t they just bring in some sort of therapeutic lay for her? Anyone off the street, really. To assuage that ache, deep between her thighs, crawling up her center...

There were actually online matching sites for mating these days. Some Omegas would mate with Alphas purely for heats. And sometimes those pairs would have Beta boyfriends or girlfriends, or another Omega: their primary partner. The partner helping them through a heat would be a secondary partner. (They had also come a long way from laws prohibiting Omegas from marrying Omegas. )

The idea that you needed to love whomever you shared a heat with, well, that was outdated.

The social worker is unfazed by Rey’s evident arousal. “How’s your support network?”

She thinks about Plutt, the fellow workers at the demolition yard. Probably not. 

She shrugs. “I can handle myself.” Can she? 

She always has.

* * *

The next day, Rey meets with a doctor at the clinic specializing in Omega health and routine care. She feels like a hot potato, getting tossed around to healthcare provider after healthcare provider. The woman is likely in her fifties, with a kind face, stern eyes, and a strangely comforting attitude about the whole situation.

“I’m sure you have a lot of questions, and I’m sure this is a scary time for you,” Dr. Organa tells her assuredly. Rey realizes about thirty seconds into the encounter that the woman is an Alpha. She smells it on the woman: lavender. A slight hint of sandalwood. Something familiar.

“Well, yes,” Rey manages to squeak out. Her heat is easing up on its third day. She’s not squeezing her thighs together in nonstop painful arousal. It’s become more sporadic, less constant.

“I’m going to be straightforward with you,” Dr. Organa glances down at Rey’s chart. “I’m about to retire. But I’m here to help you through this process, and help get you referred, and help you get the care you need.”

Rey presses her lips together. “Are there even that many other Omega specialists in the city?”

Dr. Organa lets out a little sigh and shakes her head. “Unfortunately not. Many of our patients are referred to local obstetricians and gynecologists. It depends on the case.”

Rey stays silent and despondent through the rest of the encounter, wondering if she can even go back to her old primary care doctor.

Dr. Organa pauses her physical exam when she comes to the back of Rey’s neck. 

“Your doctors never thought that your scent gland back here might be an indicator?” The woman inquires.

Rey shakes her head and shrugs, her paper gown crinkling. “They thought it was an anomaly.”

Dr. Organa purses her lips. “It’s incredibly rare for Betas to have a scent gland.” Then, under her breath, she adds, “Horses, not zebras.”

“Excuse me?” Rey asks with raised eyebrows. 

“When doctors hear hooves, they should think horses, not zebras. They should have immediately pre-screened you for Omega status. Your visit to the emergency room was entirely preventable.”

If it was possible, Rey becomes even more crestfallen and frustrated.

“Because your first heat occurred later in life, your body was less prepared to help you regulate it. Omegas in their late teens are still going through puberty, and those hormones can really assist them in making it easier to handle. We also, as you know, have protocols and a system in place, for younger Omegas who begin to present.”

Younger Omegas weren’t expected to mate, and of course, there were fewer and fewer of them these days. 

By the time she gets back to her room at the clinic, her dark mood has all but eradicated the last vestiges of her heat from her veins.

* * *

She now has to consider the consequences of this shift. Of this new role of hers. Particularly the financial ones.

It’s not like Plutt really offers top-notch health insurance at the demolition yard.

In the clinic cafeteria, she attempts socialization with a few others like her, trying to get the lay of the land.

“Here at the clinic,” she pauses, feeling trepidation, looking around the linoleum table, “are there options for new Omegas with financial concerns? Or any sort of job counseling?”

The others give her a sympathetic look. She’s getting tired of that look. The same look on different faces.

One of them, a young man named Finn, nods his head. “There’s some help. It’s better than nothing. Not as bad as in the south, or more rural areas, thankfully.”

The others chuckle with hollow laughter at that. Rey senses she’s hit a sore spot with this inquiry.

Still, later, she and Finn exchange phone numbers and go for a walk through the garden outside. They bond slightly. They both grew up in the foster system. They’re both out of their element here, at the clinic. He began his heat later in life too, and came to the clinic when his mate had to go out of town for business. Rey was sure there was a valid explanation for this, but she knew it was rare for mated pairs to abandon each other during a heat or a rut. 

At the end of the day, she’s just grateful to feel like she’s found a kindred spirit. Someone to maybe hold her hand through all of this.

* * *

As she’s preparing for discharge, she meets with Dr. Organa one last time in the woman’s office.

“Oh my god,” she whispers, seeing a framed photo on the bookshelf behind her doctor’s desk. “That’s your son?”

Dr. Organa turns her head to follow Rey’s gaze. “Ah, yes. That’s Ben. Dr. Solo. He disappointed me a bit when he didn’t pursue private practice.” The woman clicks her tongue at this. “He actually did his residency specializing in Omega gynecology under my brother, Luke. But, he was later tempted towards the darker side of…” Dr. Organa pauses, “surgery and trauma care. Some might say it was a classic Alpha move.”

Rey giggles, remembering how that dark side meant instructing a poor Omega in heat how to properly fuck herself on a dildo at 3:00 a.m. “What a shame.”

Rey then finds herself desperately wanting to ask a question. A question that has more to do with her doctor’s son, than the doctor herself.

“How can you treat me, by the way?” Rey blurts out.

Dr. Organa narrows her eyes, apparently offended.

“I just mean. You’re an Alpha,” Rey backtracks, stammering.

The woman relaxes a bit. “I’m old, Rey. To be blunt, my libido isn’t what it once was. I’m well past all that. When I was younger, I took special suppressants manufactured for Alphas. Most doctors in my situation do.”

Rey shuts her mouth, her curiosity assuaged. That made sense.

Dr. Organa leads Rey through boring paperwork. Temporary financial assistance. Employer counseling. Government benefits that were too few and far between. Rey is thankful the woman is here to assist her. There’s something in her kind eyes, in the way she answers her questions, that’s reassuring.

* * *

Rey loses her job at Plutt’s approximately twelve minutes after she first attempts to return to work the next day.

The gross, wrinkly man cites budgets concerns and layoffs.

She knows it’s bullshit, and ultimately there aren’t actually any laws prohibiting employers from dismissing Omegas due to lapses in work performance due to heats.

Maybe it’s for the best.

Is this what it was like? Is this how it was going to be, from now on? All this vague side-eyeing. Employers giving her hell for taking time off during a heat. She’d read the articles on Jezebel. She’s read viral tell-all stories of Omegas and how awfully they had been treated in the workplace. A fat lot of good all that journalism had done them. It’s not like, even with any laws protecting them, they would ever be enforced.

Rey knew there was some absurd statistic about how many assaults on Omegas went reported, versus how many were prosecuted, versus how many abusers and assaulters were ever actually convicted.

She always knew the world was scary. It just felt way more tangible, now.

It felt particularly more tangible now that the clinic had given her a fucking rape whistle and a kit with emergency scent-blockers. Why was it her fucking job as an Omega to protect herself from aggressive Alphas? Wasn’t it their job to get their own shit and aggression under control?

Rey huffs as she departs the demolition yard, final paltry paycheck in her hand. She sniffles and wipes away snot on the back of her hand. 

Before this week, she had been convinced her life had to remain somehow connected to Plutt and the demolition yard. That she’d be able to find her way back home, to her family.

She didn’t want to give up hope, but she had to rid herself of the notion, now that everything was going to change.

She’s still Rey, of course. She’ll always be Rey, she hopes.

She’ll just. Be a lot hornier? Smell a lot better? 

Want to get bitten? Mated?

As she wanders aimlessly through the city streets, taking in the concrete jungle she’s never really allowed herself to properly explore, she makes a mental note to give herself a refresher course on the exact intricate dynamics that went into mating. And all that scenting and biting and. She gulps. Knotting.

She feels herself clench at that thought.

That’s never a response she’s really had before, to the concept of knotting.

Okay then.

* * *

When she gets back to her apartment, she collapses in a fit of tears on her kitchen floor.

Her unfinished bread lies forgotten, not quite yet moldy, on the counter.

She curls up on the cool tile of her studio apartment and cries for hours until her eyes are red and itchy and the floor beneath her is wet. 

Rey falls asleep like that, surrounded by the abandoned baking on her counters.


	3. Any Other World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey gets a new doctor at the clinic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Okay, without spoiling this before you read, there's something I should clear up here, because this chapter is from Rey's perspective.**  
>  **First of all, warning: THIS CHAPTER DEPICTS A MEDICAL EXAMINATION.**  
>  **Additionally: Dr. Solo is not taking advantage of Rey in this chapter. It is NOT meant to be interpreted that way. If you read it like that at all, please send concrit to my Tumblr:[arroways.tumblr.com](https://arroways.tumblr.com/)**  
>  **If you believe I need to adjust my tagging or warnings in any way, again, PLEASE reach out to me. Talk to me! I want to know. I want this to be a safe fandom space.**  
>  **AGAIN: HEED THE TAGS AND WARNINGS. THIS FIC IS TAGGED MEDICAL KINK. IF THIS SQUICKS OR TRIGGERS YOU, PLEASE CLICK OUT.**  
>  Also, [You can read my Tumblr post on this here](https://arroways.tumblr.com/post/174387302098/regarding-temperature-and-tagging). I'm open to all concrit and feedback. I want to tell the story I want to tell, but I want to do it in a way that provides adequate warning and tagging for readers.  
> There are more author notes at the bottom of this fic.  
> Thank you so much!  
> SPECIAL THANKS TO: [afalsebravado](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afalsebravado/pseuds/afalsebravado), [destinies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinies), [oscillateswildly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oscillateswildly/works), [heliocentrics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heliocentrics), and [voicedimplosives](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voicedimplosives) for their help, insight, and guidance on this chapter.

When Rey awakens, she has a horrible cramp in her neck. She lifts herself tenderly up off the kitchen floor. One side of her face still tingles from the cold tiles. 

She groans, and slumps up against the cheap imitation wood veneer of her lower counters. She stretches her arms out above her before leaning forward and putting her head between her knees to breathe a bit. 

After she collects herself, she lifts herself up off the floor and goes into her bathroom to look in the mirror. She inspects her reddened cheek, ignoring the cracks in the surface of the glass, and pulls at her eyes, noticing the dark circles that have formed there during the ordeal of the last few days. 

She tests a smile in the mirror, watching dimples form in her cheeks. But her smile fades as sunlight streams in from the windows and hits the cracks, breaking up her reflection.

Rey’s bathroom (and apartment) have seen better days, but she puts a lot of effort into keeping them as tidy and clean as she can. A lone red flower sits in an empty coffee canister on the bathroom windowsill. The black and white tiles on the floor are cracked like the mirror, but she has lovingly spent once a month on her hands and knees scrubbing this floor clean. 

After a moment spent peering into her broken mirror, she pulls the thin cotton of her shirt down and out of the way, before twisting around and inspecting the gland on her neck that’s always been there. 

The exact anatomy of these glands perplexes scientists and researchers. A few things were known for sure: they played a role in pheromone production; they were integral to the mating process; and, Betas rarely presented with them. 

The gland resembles a small patch of slightly darker skin. Like a large freckle. It had felt a bit swollen the past few days. It had ached. Now, it just felt like a grim reminder.

She huffs and arranges her hair so that it covers the offensive patch of skin, like she’s always done.

* * *

After a quick breakfast of Frosted Flakes (no milk, too pricey), she dials Finn. She knows they only just met, but there are not many people in this city right now who she feels like she can easily confide in. She’s also desperate to stay busy. Her job at Plutt’s had at least been familiar. That’s the devil she knew. And boredom? The experience was almost foreign to her.

“Can we hang out?” she tentatively whispers into the phone when he picks up. She’s laying upside down on the futon in her living space. She kicks the walls with the heels of her feet.

He waffles a bit, claiming he’s exhausted after his stay at the clinic, but she manages to convince him getting out of his apartment is a good idea.

They end up grabbing coffee in the city at a local franchise named Cruiser Coffee. As they order, Finn steps to the side to speak to a young woman who appears to be the manager. She’s smaller, a bit plucky, with a pretty round face and bangs. She wears a pair of denim overalls and a dark green apron with the shop’s logo on it.

Rey can smell that this young woman is an Alpha. She smells sweet, like strawberries and cream. 

When they order, their drinks are free. Rey doesn’t question it, she’s just thrilled to get a caffeine fix at no cost to her.

Finn and Rey settle in at a booth near one of the windows of the futuristic shop. The table where they sit is metallic. Little green aliens hang from mobiles on the ceiling. There are posters for old sci-fi movies on the walls.

“I lost my job,” she confesses, gripping her latte with two hands. “I don’t know where to even begin, or what to do next. I don’t know if I want to go back to school. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing with my life.” She sets her latte down and throws her hands in the air in a huff of frustration.

Finn considers this for a second. He stirs sugar into his cappuccino. 

“I want to put you in touch with my boyfriend, Poe Dameron. He’s also an Omega. He works with a local liberal nonprofit, The Resistance. One of the doctors from the clinic is a benefactor. Her name is Leia – wasn’t she your doctor? Anyway, it’s really Omega-friendly. He might be able to help, especially job-wise.”

She blinks, her brain jumping backward. She doesn’t process his comment about the job just yet. Instead: his mate is another Omega? Was he the one who had been out of town, when Finn had been at the clinic? She feels weird prying. Omegas dating Omegas used to be incredibly taboo and frowned upon. They hadn’t even been allowed to marry, not until the eighties. 

She makes a mental note to inquire about this arrangement later. Her curiosity is going to get the best of her.

She decides to acknowledge the job part. “Thank you, Finn.”

“It’s scary, but yeah, there’s a good community out there to help. There’s a network and stuff. They get that it’s not easy.”

At that point, the same young woman from earlier comes over and loops her arm around Finn’s shoulders. She presses a quick kiss to his temple.

Rey can’t hide the quizzical look on her face.

“I’m Rose,” the woman says, reaching across the table to shake Rey’s hand.

“I’m Rey,” she responds. “Are you to thank for our free coffee?” Rey motions at Rose’s apron.

The young woman nods cheerfully. “Anything for Finn.”

Rey smiles at them. Finn is looking up at the young woman with a wide smile and warm gaze. They share another quick, chaste kiss before Rose gives her farewell and heads back behind the counter.

Rey leans forward. “I don’t mean to pry, but –”

Finn grins at her. “Rose is my Alpha. She was out of town last week for management training or something.”

“And Poe is your boyfriend?” 

Finn nods, sipping his cappuccino. 

Rey blinks twice. “I mean, I guess I knew arrangements like this existed, I’ve just never met anyone…” she trails off. “You know?

He nods. “I know. I always get the same reaction. But it’s the twenty-first century, Rey!”

Rey gives him a smile before sipping her latte again. She wonders if Finn’s boyfriend, Poe, has an Alpha of his own.

Rey leans in, curious. “So does, Rose like, bite you?” She’s always been curious about this aspect of mating dynamics. It always shows up as tags on the porn sites she peruses.

Finn visibly bristles. He tenses in shock, leans away, and frowns. She’s struck a nerve.

“That’s – you don’t –” he sputters.

She clasps a hand over her mouth in shame. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean –”

He gets serious. “That’s not appropriate to ask about, Rey. I know you’re new, but. Just be careful.”

She apologizes profusely, her curiosity still lingering. He moves on from the faux pas, but there’s still a slight tension in his voice as he speaks.

Their coffee date begins to fizzle out. Finn agrees to talk to Poe about networking and job opportunities through the nonprofit.

“But if that doesn’t work out, you could always work here, with Rose,” Finn adds as they depart.

* * *

“Hello?” Rey opens her Nokia flip phone, gripping the shopping cart in front of her.

“I’m calling for Rey Niima?”

“Speaking.” Rey balances her cell phone on her shoulder as she strolls through the aisles of a Family Dollar.

“I’m calling from Takodana Outpatient Clinic. I’m calling to schedule your follow-up. Based on your intake forms, you’re interested in birth control?”

“That’s right. I suppose…” Rey considers her newly unemployed status. She’d already begun an application for temporary assistance and Medicaid. “I suppose I have all the time in the world now. Just put me down whenever.”

“Would you also be interested in scheduling your Pap smear at the same time? Get it all over with in one go?” The woman at the other end of the line says this with a chuckle.

Rey sighs. Might as well. “Yes, that’s fine. Will I be seeing Dr. Organa again?” 

The woman clicks her tongue as she taps away loudly at her keyboard. “Dr. Organa is in the process of transferring away from outpatient services. We have a few local doctors who do rounds here on a volunteer and pro bono basis for patients in financial need. Dr. Ren will be in tomorrow if you’re available.”

“Fine, yeah, let’s just get it over with,” Rey agrees. She bristles at the comment about financial need. She’s never been thrilled about her income, but she’s always been proud of her independence. And Plutt’s had at least given her that. She makes a mental note to buckle down and get a job, stat.

* * *

The next day, Rey heads back to the clinic, but is directed to a separate part of the building. It resembles a regular doctor’s office, rather than the inpatient unit of a hospital.

She taps her foot nervously in the waiting room, looking through a few gossip tabloids and flipping through brochures. The chairs are threadbare, as is the carpet. Some of the wallpaper is peeling slightly off the walls. Otherwise, it’s clean and smells sterile. She can tell that the office is cared for, but is clearly lacking a bit of funding.

A nurse ushers her into an exam room and directs her to change into a cloth exam gown. Rey changes quickly and timidly, jumping up on the exam table and swinging her feet a bit as she waits for the doctor to arrive.

She looks around at the pastel-painted walls, glancing at the posters detailing Omega anatomy. She leans forward, trying to figure out the specifics of the Omega male parts. How intricate.

She flinches when she hears a cursory knock on the door. The doctor enters the room, walking backward. He’s speaking to a nurse, backing in with a laptop and a cart in tow. He has a stethoscope around his neck, and he’s tall. Maybe six inches taller than she is. The cart makes a loud clanging sound as he rolls it into the room.

As he turns around, recognition flashes across both their faces.

Now that her sanity has (somewhat) returned, she’s able to size this man up with a clear mind. Being in the ER had left her with a patchy, rattled memory. It takes her a moment, but she would recognize those eyes and that hair anywhere. Particularly the mole on his neck, visible above his collared shirt and crisp white coat. The one she distinctly remembers wanting to lick in the middle of her heat. 

_ You’d still lick it now. _

He’s broader than she remembered. He’s got a slight five o’clock shadow. He’s not hiding behind a face mask now, so she can easily analyze his angular nose and full lips. The freckles and moles on his face.

“Dr. Ren? You’re not Dr. Ren,” Rey says accusingly. She’s incredibly aware of the fact that she’s wearing only a gown and her underwear. Granted, the last time this guy saw her, she was in heat and desperately asking for masturbatory advice. 

He stammers a bit, caught off guard. He fiddles with the laptop cart, rolling it further into the room before leaning on a linoleum counter. “It’s an old habit. An old alias. From before. A long story.”

She blinks at him. “If you’re going down there,” Rey waves her hand over her abdomen, “I’d like to know why you have an alias. Like a serial killer.”

“I couldn’t work both here and at the hospital. My mo – Dr. Organa agreed to let me assist at the clinic under an alias. I just haven’t been back in a while.”

Rey takes a moment to search his eyes. It’s almost like he’s pleading with her. She makes it clear with her arms crossed over her chest that this explanation isn’t enough. 

He sighs. “There are some conservative coworkers of mine, at the hospital where I work full-time,” he tries to elaborate.

It dawns on her, understanding his implication by the way he says the word  _ conservative _ . She recoils slightly, but not from him. From the notion that doctors might receive some sort of professional criticism for volunteering at an Omega clinic. 

She leans back on her elbows to blink back a few tears that had gathered in the corner of her eyes. Knowing there were people out there who thought her shameful. Who didn’t think she was proper.

“Right. Okay,” she murmurs.

“So,” he rummages through a drawer in the corner of the room, pulls out a face mask, and loops it around his neck. “First order of business. Birth control.”

“Yes,” she watches as he approaches her and pulls his mask on, over his nose and mouth. He’s even more recognizable like this. Only his eyes visible, like that night in the ER. Does he need the mask to mask her scent, she wonders?

“For Omega females, we usually recommend an upper arm implant.” He motions for her to hold out her left arm. “It would go in here,” he gently pats the skin there, and she flinches slightly with a sharp inhale. 

He pulls back immediately. “Are you alright?”

She laughs, shakes her head. “Just ticklish.”

It’s a lie. The brush of his bare skin against hers had sent an electric jolt straight to her groin.

He continues. “The upper arm implant means little to no complications during your cycle. We rarely recommend an IUD for Omega females. Too risky during a heat.”

She nods, swallowing. “I’d like something I can just get and forget about. Too much going on in my life, I don’t need to worry about taking a pill or coming in for a shot.”

“It’s a quick procedure. We can get it done today.”

She nods, and he steps away to the room’s corded phone, talking quickly to a nurse on the other end.

Dr. Solo (Dr. Ren?) returns to her side.

“Now. Heat suppressants. We called in an order for you since you indicated you were interested during your last visit.”

She nods again.

“I’m required to tell you about side effects. Suppressing a heat can lead to mood lability, headaches, nausea –”

“And you’re just another Alpha, assuming you know what’s best for Omegas, up on your high horse,” Rey snaps, interrupting him. As quickly as it comes out, she feels herself flush. Where the fuck had that come from? Is she a rampant, outspoken Omega activist now? It’s like all her nervous energy, all her anger and frustration that wasn’t even necessarily directed towards him, came out in a precisely aimed fireball.

He tilts his head. This nearly infuriates Rey even more. She feels her blood simmer just beneath her skin. Is this residual hormones from her heat a few days ago? 

“Rey, I assisted this clinic with Omega health for years. I like to think my position as an Alpha gives you a unique perspective –”

She cuts him off. “Forget it.”

He pauses and crosses his arms over his chest.

“In order to avoid these side effects, we recommend limiting your use. You should have a heat every ninety days, instead of once a month, with your cycle.”

She scoffs slightly. Every three months? Bullshit. “Fine,” she says with a roll of her eyes.

He blinks back at her. “This is my recommendation, as your doctor.” 

She blows a puff of air out of her cheeks. “I went twenty-four years without one of those debilitating episodes. Now I’m supposed to have one every three months? Sure. That’s fine.”

She’s pissed off. She makes sure it’s evident in the way she bares her teeth slightly, the way she crosses  _ her _ arms over her chest, the way she kicks the exam table beneath her slightly.

Only he doesn’t question her, he doesn’t disagree with her. 

“I can’t pretend like I know exactly what you’re experiencing, but it makes sense that you feel this way.”

They leave it at that. He hands over a packet of pills, and she shoves them aggressively in her purse before settling back down on the table.

He begins a routine physical. She hates how bizarrely calming his presence is, so close to her once more. Body heat radiates off of him in waves. Again, she’s left wondering if this is all pheromones, or something else.

What else?

Dr. Solo/Dr. Ren presses the stethoscope against her upper left back, her upper right back. He instructs her to take a few deep breaths. 

He comes around to her front, holding the cold metal over her heart. 

He takes a shuddering, shaky breath. She tenses. Is there something wrong with her? Does he hear something wrong with her heart? Did she imagine that? 

As quickly as it had happened, it passes. His demeanor is entirely calm, cool, collected. Professional.

“Your pulse is a bit fast,” he explains. “Are you alright?”

She gives him a tight smile. “White coat syndrome,” she says, like a liar. “I’ve never liked coming to the doctor.”

He glances at her face quickly. “You’re not the first.”

“Won’t be the last,” she responds. 

“Just take a few deep breaths.”

She does so, hoping her rabbit pulse will ease up. She’s aware of it hammering away inside her chest, but she’s also  _ hyper _ aware of it now, knowing that he’s listening, that he can hear it so intimately.

“Fast, but in working order.”

She relaxes. At least some part of her is doing its job.

“Do you keep up with a monthly breast exam?” he asks, his hands hovering over a brochure on a counter nearby. 

She shakes her head, guilty. “I mean, aren’t I a bit young for that?” 

“It’s important for females of all designations to monitor and prevent their risk of breast cancer.”

She nods. “Okay.”

“The brochure will explain, but essentially, you’ll lift your arm,” he lifts his own arm, and with his opposite arm, begins to knead at the fabric over his pectoral muscles. “Check for any abnormalities. Any lumps, any pain.” 

He drops his arms and hands her the brochure. 

She wonders if he could perform one of those breast exams on her. It doesn’t sound unpleasant.

_ Shut up, you thirsty brat. _

“Alright, are you ready to move on to the pelvic exam?”

“I’ve never done one of these before,” she confesses, her heart rate increasing again. She feels slightly dizzy. Is that normal? Will she topple off the table?

“Hm. That’s not uncommon,” he tells her as he rummages through a drawer. “I’m going to leave the room briefly. You’ll need to take off your underwear, but you can leave on the gown.”

He steps away, closing the door gently behind him.

She pulls off her cotton briefs and shoves them into her purse, next to the pills. (What was the point of an implant if she also had to take additional pills to suppress her heats? Couldn’t it be an all-in-one deal? Or was medicine not that evolved yet?)

Dr. Solo/Ren (maybe she should just think of him as the Brooding Hot Doctor) enters the room again, saying something to a nurse in the hallway before turning back to her and closing the door.

She feels her muscles tense as she settles back onto the exam table. Not because of him. Just. She’s not thrilled about the idea of a metal tool scraping her cervix. 

“Do you want me to bring a nurse in? Are you okay?” His voice is oddly gentle now. Reminds her of his mother.

She clenches her jaw slightly, almost offended at his tone. Like he thinks she can’t handle this. Does he think she’s some delicate female Omega? Desperate for a caregiver and a knot?

“No, it’s – it’s fine.”

“Alright. You just say the word. But this won’t take long at all. And Rey,” he pauses and meets her gaze, “I’ve done thousands of these. It’s nothing. You’ll be just fine.”

Rey blinks and leans back onto the exam table, the paper rustling beneath her. She settles her palms on her thighs. She breathes slow, even breaths.

It’s also at this exact moment she realizes that with her pubic hair, it’s like the seventies down there. She scrunches her eyes shut and mentally reminds herself that this guy has probably seen all types of genitalia. She hopes. Also, what the fuck? It’s the twenty-first century. She can do whatever she wants with her bush. Her doctor should be the last person who gives a fuck. 

The Brooding Hot Doctor settles on a stool and rolls over to the exam table. She adjusts her cloth gown, blinking up at the fluorescent lights. 

She hears the snap of latex and looks down to watch him pull the gloves on.

It’s then that she notices a small bandage on his upper left forearm, the type one might get after receiving a flu shot. Her mind wanders to what Dr. Organa had said the other day. Something about inhibitors or suppressants for Alpha doctors. Is that what the bandage was?

She’s also supremely distracted by those forearms. His white coat and shirt are rolled up around his sleeves. His forearms are huge, muscular. She feels warmth lick at her, feels her chest constrict slightly and her throat gets tight.

_ Chill out, Rey. You’re not the first individual to be vaguely attracted to your doctor. Doctors can be attractive too. Just stay professional. _

“Can we talk?” she manages to squeak out.

He hums in response. “Excuse me?”

“I’m just… I’m a bit nervous.”

“We can talk.”

“Did you always want to work in an ER?” She remembers what Dr. Organa had said about her son. 

He’s doing something down there, with his latex exam gloves and all those scary metal tools. Why couldn’t they invent something less aggressive looking? Why did everything have to look like a torture device?

“Well, as you know, I initially did my residency in Omega health,” he says nonchalantly. She hears the sound of a bottle squirting. Was that  _ lube _ ? 

“I was going to ask. You’re an Alpha, treating Omega patients,” she comments.

“Well, I have this,” he points at his forearm, where the bandage is. It vaguely confirms her assumption regarding suppressants. She supposes she didn’t need to know the details. He looks up at her. “Plus, lots of doctors are Alphas. But for me, I knew an Omega in college…” he looks off into the distance briefly. “I just. I wanted to help, I suppose. But after my residency, I was offered a position, a chance to take a fellowship in trauma surgery, with a well-known attending doctor at prestigious teaching hospital up north.”

She chuckles. “He saw great potential in you, did he?”

The Brooding Hot Doctor looks up at her. She becomes vaguely self-conscious of her double chin at this angle. “Dr. Snoke is – was – an incredible trauma surgeon. I was lucky to study under him.”

“You don’t work with him anymore?”

He shakes his head slightly and leaves it at that. Rey begins to count the ceiling tiles. She gets to twelve when he realizes he’s waiting calmly, patiently. Not doing anything.

“Rey.” She tilts her head slightly to look down at him. “You’re going to need to –” He motions. “It’s okay. Nothing I haven’t seen before,” he attempts to lighten the mood. Maybe he assumes her unease is from inexperience. 

Rey scoots down the exam table a bit farther and breathes as evenly as she possibly can. He’s right. This is his job. She’s the one all out of sorts here.

He’s honestly being nothing but straightforward and calm.

Her knees are still glued together. She’s certain she must have spilled super glue on herself and now she can’t spread her thighs. Maybe there’s some sort of magnetic energy, keeping her skin fused together.

Yes, maybe she can use that as an excuse.  _ Sorry Dr. Solo, Dr. Ren, whatever, thighs not opening. Vaginal canal not open for business. Not for any sort of Pap smear. Not happening. Never will happen. Put that speculum back where it came from or so help me. _

She tentatively spreads her legs open, setting her feet into the stirrups at the end of the table.

As she does so, a thought flits across her frontal cortex.  _ Tell me I’m good, _ the thought says.  _ Tell me I’m good, for doing as you asked. _

Rey tries to keep a straight face as she lets that bizarre thought float away. She continues to blink up at the speckles in the ceiling tiles.

“Can I ask you a strange question? Since I’m new to this whole Omega thing?” She wants to shut herself up. She’s word vomiting now. Shut up! She’s going to start babbling, say something she’ll regret.

He nods. “Of course.”

“Are all Alphas attracted to all Omegas? Or vice versa?” Rey asks nonchalantly, the doctor scooching between her thighs. She feels her muscles tense and tremble slightly. 

He pauses and straightens. She looks down at him through her legs. “I’m serious,” she adds.

He presses his lips together. “It’s not like that.” He doesn’t appear angry with her. Possibly disappointed.

She clicks her tongue. “Interesting. I thought it’s all, you know, uncontrollable urges… mating…” she trails off, tilting her head into the plastic sheeting of the exam table. Maybe she’ll sink into the material and disappear forever.

He leans back down between her legs. She begins to pick at her cuticles.

“Did you ever have a crush when you were designated as a Beta?” he asks suddenly, after a few moments of silence.

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, it’s like any other type of attraction. Some mates work better together than others. Different scents are more attractive than others. Everyone is different. Attraction varies for all designations: Alpha, Beta, or Omega.”

She shrugs. “I wouldn’t know.”

Brooding Hot Doctor can’t hide his evident surprise. His eyes widen a bit, his eyebrows raise ever so slightly. 

“I think Hollywood gives a misconstrued opinion of what it means to be an Alpha or an Omega. This isn’t an uncommon inquiry from our patients,” he says.

“I suppose it’s always been a bit of an enigma to me. And the rest of the world,” she muses. “I’ve always thought of mating and heats as this very antiquated, very obtuse process. A bit… primal.”

He shakes his head. “Most normal thing ever. Evolution just caught up with us, I suppose. That’s why Betas are the majority of the population these days.”

“Most normal thing ever? Tell that to the porn industry.”

He subdues a chuckle. The first time she’s heard him make a sound even remotely resembling a laugh.

“And not all Alphas and Omegas are compatible. In fact, like I said, in college…” he trails off, shaking his head. “Just. It’s like dating. Things don’t always work out.” He shrugs.

She smiles tentatively down at him, grateful for this little bit of insight. She feels her legs relax slightly.

“Alright, we’re going to begin the uncomfortable part. Are you ready?” he asks. She hums in acknowledgment.

She stiffens as he presses the cold metal speculum to her entrance. The talking had distracted her. She’d almost forgotten what they were here for. She tries to keep the discussion going about mating. 

“Take a deep breath. When you exhale, I’m going to press in,” he tells her with an even voice.

She does so, and it’s not terrible. It’s uncomfortable, and there’s a stretch, but she manages to breathe. 

“Just continue to breathe,” he tells her. “Almost done.”

She relaxes into the sound of his voice. He’s gentle, even if the speculum is not.

“You’re going to feel a slight cramping –”

She winces, knowing that’s the sensation of him scraping a few cells from her cervix, to test for any abnormalities.

It’s like a pinch, deep within her abdomen, somewhere she never knew she could feel pain or sensation.

As quickly as it had started, it’s over.

“That wasn’t so bad,” she murmurs. He nods at her.

“Alright, I’m going to do a quick manual exam,” he says as he stands up and changes his gloves.

She can’t hide the tension in her voice. “I’m sorry – what?”

He looks down at her, sending her unease. “It’s very quick. I’ll insert my gloved fingers into your vaginal canal, inspect your cervix, check for lesions or fibroids on or around your uterus. Won’t take much longer than thirty seconds.”

There’s that tension back in her chest, but she nods and rests against the table again. 

_ This isn’t a sexual thing _ , she reminds herself.  _ Behave. You’re just thirsty. This is the most action you may ever get. _

She desperately hopes she isn’t the first patient to be a bit attracted to her doctor. To wonder what his fingers would feel like inside her in another scenario. Possibly one where he’s licking her neck at the same time.

He settles back onto his stool. 

“Ready?” he asks. She hums down at him.

His cold, lubricated, gloved index finger presses into her entrance, and she gasps slightly. There’s a slight wet sound with the intrusion.

“Are you alright?” he stills.

She nods. “It’s fine. Just cold.” He adds a second finger to continue his exam.

His hands are large. She’d noticed it earlier. But it’s another experience entirely, having two of this thick fingers inside her. The knowledge of it is more dizzying than the actual sensation.

Her mind wanders, wondering how it would feel were he not wearing gloves.

Wondering about the press of his bare skin against her inner walls. Would his fingers be rough, calloused? 

She physically shakes the thought from her head.

He looks back up at her from between her legs. “Are you sure you’re alright?” His brow furrows in slight concern. 

“Yes, no, it’s fine,” she grits her teeth. 

Her mind races. His fingers are so infinitesimally close to where she  _ wants  _ them, that spot she had discovered the other night with that toy – shut up, lizard brain – and he’s prodding gently and methodically, and it’s not particularly  _ arousing _ , but the knowledge that this guy, with those forearms, with his thick fingers, if he were actually putting effort into it in  _ another way _ – it’s just his fingers are  _ big _ and there’s  _ pressure _ and she feels slightly  _ full -  _

Her train of thought is interrupted by his deep voice. She realizes her eyes had fluttered shut, and they fly open in surprise.

“No fibroids, no lesions,” his eyes wander up to the ceiling. He’s pressing down slightly on her abdomen with his other hand. It’s warm. “Do you ever experience any abnormal cramping or pelvic pain?”

She shakes her head. She feels ashamed. He’s here doing his job, she’s here thinking about him curving his fingers upward, putting pressure where she wants them. 

Only he doesn’t. 

He withdraws quickly, methodically. She relaxes. She’s not sure if the sticky moisture between her legs is because of the medical lubricant, or… her.

There’s that primal part of her, the new Omega within her, that’s almost offended that he isn’t more fazed by this encounter. Why doesn’t she, an Omega, drive him, an Alpha, mad with lust? Particularly like this. Her legs spread in front of him. 

Her _cunt_ right there, ripe for the harvest.

_ Why doesn’t he want to throw her down on the table? Why won’t he?  _

She’s so glad he’s no longer in such close proximity to her vulva, because she’s sure she just felt more moisture pool there. She claps her thighs shut and removes her feet from the stirrups.

Her rational, logical brain tells her to calm down, chill the  _ fuck _ out. He does this. It’s his job. He’s a professional. Get it together. 

He’s behaving himself. So should she.

“Results should only take a few days,” he tells her calmly, holding up the specimen bag and labeling it appropriately. 

The nurse chooses that time to bring in the implant and surgical paraphernalia. 

They allow her time to get back into her undies, but request she keeps her gown on.

“It’s going to be a small incision in your upper left arm,” he explains as he pulls on a surgical mask and a cap over his dark hair. 

He wipes down the soft skin on her underarm with iodine. They spend the rest of the procedure in near silence, as he injects her upper arm with a local anesthetic, and inserts the implant. 

She’s very glad the pelvic exam came first, because with him leaning over her (again, she can’t smell him, which is mind-boggling), and even though he has no scent, his proximity and the way he’s leaning so close to her makes her go a bit silly in the head.

What had he said, about attraction?

He’s methodical and focused. She finds herself getting lost in his face as he works, she watches the way his brow furrows, the little wrinkles forming on his face. The way his moles move as he frowns, or purses his lips slightly.

She can’t feel her upper arm at all, but she knows his gloved fingers are there. Precise and exact.

It’s enough of a distraction that she can’t process the fact that this whole time, he’s been cutting into her with a scalpel.

When he’s done, she looks down at the little bandage he’s placed over the incision site.

“All set?” she asks.

The Brooding Hot Doctor nods. “It might be sore for a few days. Just avoid strenuous activity with that arm. If at any point you can no longer feel the implant, call us immediately.”

He leaves the office briefly so she can get dressed again. She gingerly pulls her shirt over the incision site and struggles with the buttons of her jeans.

When the Brooding Hot Doctor returns to the room, he walks her through the other potential side effects. 

The list infuriates her. She clenches her fists slightly, wanting to walk into every pharmaceutical company in the greater United States and give them a fucking piece of her mind. Maybe invent something that will help her without potentially putting her into a coma. She’s not asking for much. 

“And, you know how to reach us,” he finishes his tangent. He rolls over to his laptop and begins to type furiously into her electronic chart.

She feels her brows furrow as her body internally cringes at what she’s about to do and say. Some part of her just wants her to drop it, move on with her life.

“I had asked a nurse to tell you, but now that you’re here… I wanted to say thank you,” she wrings her hands in her lap.

His eyebrows raise slightly, he continues to keep his focus on the laptop screen in front of him.

“I know I shouldn’t have been taken to your hospital. I know I was probably a bit of a burden that night. And…” she blushes slightly, “you were helpful.”

Something unmistakable yet unintelligible flashes in his eyes, and BHD stands up from his rolling stool with a soft metal sound.

“You weren’t a burden.”

“I just –” she stammers slightly.

“Rey,” he interrupts her, “you’re welcome.” He nods at her gently.

She relaxes slightly. “I had never felt so alone, that night,” she admits.

BHD presses his lips together and nods at her. “It was nothing. Just doing my job.” He pauses, glancing over at a pile of brochures on the laptop cart. “And you’re not alone,” he adds, looking her in the eyes and handing her a brochure about support groups in the area.

She takes the brochure, glancing down at the stock photography on its cover. He turns to his laptop once more, plopping back down onto the stool.

She appreciates how his face isn’t obscured now, without that mask. She gives him a thin smile and hops off the table. 

“Well, doc, this has been an adventure.” She crosses her arms self-consciously over her chest. “Thanks. Dr. Ren. Or Solo. Whatever.” She shakes her head slightly, still thinking the cloak and dagger routine is a bit ridiculous. She can’t let him know she’s ever referred to him as Brooding Hot Doctor, even in her head.

BHD nods at her as she departs the exam room, his eyes still glued to the computer. 

When she gets back outside the clinic, she leans up against one of its brick walls, taking steady, even breaths. Her whole consciousness feels like a dichotomy these days. Regular Rey, the one she’s always known, and now this new one: this Omega horndog Rey, getting turned on by her doctors and thinking about stuff like scents and getting  _ bitten _ .

She glances back down at the brochure, a bit damp now in her clammy hands. She turns it over, and finds a listing of local social workers and support groups in the greater metro area.

Her eyes travel to the bottom of the list:  _ Are you a new Omega? Struggling through your transition?  _ She nods down at the brochure, like its speaking to her.  _ Yes, brochure. That’s me. I’m totally fucked and have no idea what I’m doing in my life. _ There’s a name and a number listed there.

Guess it’s time for her to call Luke Skywalker of the Yavin Clinic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHAT A RIDE. 
> 
> Okay, again, I may write Ben's perspective at some point, but to him, as a doctor, this is something he's done a thousand times before. At this point, he's all drugged up and can barely smell Rey. That's what his shot is for. 
> 
> He thinks she's cute and maybe senses a little spark between them, but that doesn't translate to his examination. This is his job, he does it a ton, I don't think the Pap smear or any of that even crossed his mind as being of a sexual nature.
> 
> (Rey, on the other hand...)
> 
> Anyway. This chapter was not meant to be interpreted as dubcon. It's not supposed to be Ben taking advantage of Rey. I do get that this scenario can squick some people, which is why I've tagged it appropriately. 
> 
> But please, come talk to me, and let me know if I need to improve my tagging and warning system. I really want to maintain a safe space here, and I want to provide proper warnings as a content creator.


	4. Liquid Courage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey continues to struggle as she adjusts to her new life. Also: her sense of smell gets her into some trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The following folks get a special shout-out for keeping me sane while I wrote this chapter. Thank you for all your feedback and love: [voicedimplosives](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voicedimplosives/pseuds/voicedimplosives), [oscillateswildly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oscillateswildly/profile), [sadboykylo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadboykylo/pseuds/sadboykylo), and the lovely [afalsebravado](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afalsebravado/pseuds/afalsebravado).
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> **If you have a fear of vomiting/emetophobia, be warned that there's a scene in this chapter involving vomit. The scene occurs after the line "She watches as he reaches for the wallet in his back pocket." and is over by the line "He finally stands up (mostly) straight."**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Please note: There's also the use of the word "shrink" in the context of the mental health profession. This is meant to reflect the character's discomfort, unease, and unfamiliarity with seeking treatment, etc.

Rey spends the rest of that week and part of the next organizing her tiny studio. She cleans out her fridge. She wipes down her microwave. She dusts the baseboards and decorative molding. She wipes down her countertops, and at one point finds herself standing there, cleaner in one hand and a towel in the other, staring off blankly into the distance.

When she has nothing left to clean or tidy, she manages to scrounge everything that could possibly be pawned or sold secondhand. She even manages to sell her tiny little Chromebook. (She figures the Yellow Pages still exist. And at least she won’t have to feel guilty about stealing her neighbor’s WiFi anymore.)

She curls up on her futon for hours and watches dust particles settle on the windowsills she just finished wiping down.

At one point, her hand drifts towards the waistband of her sweatpants. She slips her fingers under the elastic, hovering over the fabric at the apex of her thighs. She tenses, and pulls her hand away quickly, going back to her regularly scheduled programming of watching particles of whatever drift through the air in the sunlight.

When tears once again begin to pool in her eyes and she doesn’t like that development, she turns over on her back and hopes the tears just get sucked back wherever they came from. They just end up trickling down her cheek.

That weekend, after she’s done feeling particularly pathetic about her life and while trying to kill some time, Rey heads to the public library. She realizes she sold her Chromebook before truly processing the consequences of not having a laptop. Plus, her Nokia flip phone has zero internet access. 

At one of the library’s public access computers, she brings up the website of the local community college and browses through their financial assistance. She peruses course options and associates programs. (What the fuck does she want to do with her life? Maybe the support group guy – Luke? – from the brochure can help her out with that.)

She opens her bank account, checking the meager savings she’s been able to collect over the past few years. She wasn’t earning minimum wage at Plutt’s, but it may well have been. The amount is a bit fatter now that she’s sold a few possessions. 

She momentarily mourns the loss of her Chromebook once more.

Rey figures she can last another four weeks on her savings alone, including rent, before she’ll need to start relying on unemployment checks. She hopes it doesn’t come to that. She doesn’t want to have to resort to a GoFundMe page, but she’s seen plenty of Omegas on social media in similar situations. 

When will the healthcare system – and Congress – get their shit together and do a better job of protecting American citizens? Maybe she should move to Norway. Omegas are apparently treated  _ very _ well in Norway. 

She Googles plane tickets to Norway. 

After realizing her Norwegian future likely won’t pan out the way she had hoped, Rey clicks over to Cruiser Coffee’s website and submits an application to be a barista. Finn  _ had _ said she could work there with Rose. Maybe Rose could even pull some strings for her. A barista gig could tide her over. She’d look cute in an apron. 

At least her position at the demo yard had been consistent and looks good on a resume. She had been formally employed there for the last six years. She won’t appear flakey. 

It’s just that she doesn’t want to put all her eggs into Poe’s nonprofit basket. She’s not sure if this nonprofit “Resistance” thing will pan out. The name sounds so social justice warrior-sy. That’s never been her style. She’s always been a lone wolf in _this_ concrete jungle. But she can only survive on ramen for so long before she loses her mind. She’d also like health insurance, if possible. That would be a perk. For all her annoying new prescriptions. Who knew it was  _ expensive _ to suppress an Omega’s heat?

After an hour of internet browsing, an elderly, stern librarian comes over and shoos her away from the computer terminal.

She ends up right back on her futon, frowning once more at the dust on the windowsill. 

* * *

“That brochure is out of date.”

Rey frowns, clutching her flip phone to her ear. She even briefly pulls it away to glance at the screen. Did she dial the right number? 

“Isn’t this the Yavin clinic?”

“It  _ was _ ,” he pauses dramatically. “And I’m no longer running that support group.”

“Oh.” She pauses, hearing the man breathing on the other end. “Are you still a shrink?” she asks.

“I’m a licensed clinical social worker,” he fires back, emphasis on the title. And then, very muffled, incredulously, she hears him whisper with a bit of a chuckle: “ _ Shrink _ . Pfft.”

Maybe she shouldn’t have used the word shrink. 

She inhales, and speaks, very matter of fact.

“Luke, you’re listed as participating in Medicaid and temporary assistance through the Takodana clinic. I could really use some help right now,” she pleads. “There aren’t a lot of other  _ licensed clinical social workers  _ specializing in,” she drops her voice, covers her mouth (she’s hiding in a booth at a Dunkin’ Donuts), “Omega health.”

She hears him loudly exhale. Again, how dramatic. 

“We can do an initial consult, hows that?” He offers.

She nods, before realizing he can’t see her. “Yes, yes please. Just say when and where.”

She binge eats the rest of her chocolate glazed Munchkins®.

* * *

Rey manages to schedule a session with Luke for early next week. Now she has to suffer the rest of  _ this _ week. Because, you know, last week had just been so productive. Absolutely no wallowing involved.

On Wednesday night, about three weeks after her first heat, she texts Finn and asks if he’s up for drinks. She’s not sure how she’ll even be able to pay for a single beer, but she knows she needs to get out of her apartment. She’s starting to get stir crazy. She  _ spoke  _ to her toaster the other day. It had browned one slice of bread and not the other. She had called it a little shit and asked it what its damage was. It did not respond.

Finn brings his boyfriend along so that he can meet Rey. They crowd into a booth at a pub downtown. Poe Dameron is gorgeous, with lovely eyes, a winning smile, and immaculately groomed stubble. He has an orange Tamagotchi with white buttons on a keychain, which is a Life Choice. He refers to it lovingly as BB-8, and “feeds” it once during their encounter.

She can  _ smell _ that Poe’s an Omega (which she knew, but was still surprising), but she can also smell something else. Another Alpha on him. His scent, and then the  _ vaguer _ lavender scent of an Alpha’s pheromones, drifting around him ever so slightly. Is that a  _ female _ Alpha she smells? It’s distinctly not Rose (then again, why would Poe smell like Rose?). What is going  _ on _ ? Are they  _ both  _ fucking other Alphas while in heat?

The men nuzzle each other in the booth as Poe explains his nonprofit to her. The organization works with liberal businesses across the states. Locally, they work with labor unions to advocate for Omega rights. Poe is a local policy coordinator for the city. Evidently, Finn works with a temp agency that’s partnered with the Resistance. Poe promises to pass along Rey’s name to the folks at the agency and keep his eye open for opportunities. She decides she likes the sound of being a temp. She could schedule her contracts around her heats.

At about half-past eleven, Finn and Poe begin to make googly eyes at each other, and she senses the night is winding down. They seem to have other plans. Bedroom plans.

After they catch a cab and leave, Rey decides to walk home. She glances around. The hospital she had been taken to only two weeks prior is only two blocks away, visible over a row of brownstones. Even though it’s dark, her apartment is only a thirty-minute walk away, and she has her mace and switchblade with her. She knows she needs the fresh air and the exercise.

As she begins to walk down the sidewalk, she smells it. 

Sandalwood. Freshly baked bread. A forest after a rainfall.

She follows her nose directly into a dive bar kitty-corner to the hospital. It pulls her in, like a fish on a hook.

Something tells her to turn around, just walk home, it’s nothing. But she’s curious. She’s still tipsy and warm. And it smells so  _ familiar _ . So  _ good.  _

She scrunches her nose like a bunny and swings open the worn front door of the very sketchy bar. 

Her eyes and her nose narrow in on a figure huddled over at the bar. A sports channel flickers on a television on the wall. 

Rey wanders up to the man who had been two fingers deep in her and had an intimate knowledge of what exactly her cervix looked like.

She can  _ smell  _ him, just as he had smelled that night she had first been admitted in the ER. He wears a pair of dark wash jeans and a crisp white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, forearms on display (his  _ forearms _ though). An ID badge is clipped to one of his belt loops. Stubble covers the lower half of his face, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks.

He is clearly drinking himself into a stupor, and while that logical part of her brain tells her she should turn around, he’s her doctor, she has no business here… there’s that  _ new _ part of her that smells something really goddamn nice and wants to go be near him.

_ Alpha. _

She’s not even in fucking heat. God help her.

She hops up onto the stool adjacent to him. He is practically  _ lolling  _ his head. 

“I thought doctors only get shitfaced like this on network television,” Rey remarks as he falls forward slightly on his stool. He catches himself by bracing two hands on the edge of the bar.

“Bad shift,” he mutters, glancing over at her. He leans on his elbow. His eyes flutter shut. She can smell a faint hint of the hospital on him, sterile, and the heady scent of liquor.

She knows he’s the Alpha. She knows he’s the grown man, probably mid-thirties, a doctor with a job and a life. And yet he’s slumped here, drunk as a frat boy, his hair lanky and falling in his face. The two other times she’s seen him, it’s been pulled back neatly or beneath a surgical cap. 

“Hey, you okay?” she looks at him with concern and leans forward slightly. “You okay, doc?”

He turns toward her, his eyes glassy, his hair tousled. 

“You can just call me Ben,” he whispers. “Please just call me Ben for now.” His words slur slightly. She swears she hears him mutter incoherently, “ _ Not doctor, not now, _ ” beneath his breath.

“Sure, yeah. Whatever you want,” she responds. Her brows are still furrowed and she glances around the mostly empty bar. Is he here alone?

Perched on the stool, she continues to watch in concern as he throws his whiskey back and raises a hand to the bartender for another round. 

When the bartender comes by, she leans forward and whisper-asks “Water?” to the man, who acquiesces. He places a glass of water and another whiskey down in front of Ben, but the doctor ignores the water and goes straight for the Jim Beam.

“I smelled you,” she offers casually. “That’s something I wasn’t really able to do, before two weeks ago. It’s weird.”

He shrugs, sips at his whiskey. “That’s common after a first heat.”

“But I  _ smelled _ you. Like. Outside. On the sidewalk. A block away.”

He glances over at her. “And I smell you.” His nostrils flare. He leans towards her slightly, stops himself, and then pulls back. His pupils are huge, but is that just the alcohol?

She stares at him, wide-eyed for a moment. “You do?” So he  _ does _ smell her? What does she smell like, to him? She finds herself leaning in towards him now as well. 

She wants to create a laundry detergent out of his scent and wash all her clothes and bedsheets in it.

“I’m off the clock,” he shrugs and points at his forearm, where there’s a faint mark indicating a past shot. 

She tries not to look at his muscular forearm (evidently her kryptonite these days). “So you shoot yourself, with what… a drug?”

He nods. “When I know I’m going to be around,” his eyes travel up and down her body. It’s not a lewd look, but it’s pretty suggestive. She instinctively crosses her arms over her chest. “Around, you know.”

“I know,” she almost pouts. When he’s going to be around thirst-traps like her. An Omega.

The door of the dive bar swings open and Rey senses a change. There’s a strange shift, something harsh and unwanted, in the environment. 

She glances over at the two new visitors. Initially, they approach the far end of the bar, presumably intending to order drinks.

They look over and see Ben, and abandon this initial intention. They approach Rey and Ben. The woman gives Rey a quick cursory glance. The man ignores her.

Rey sniffs the air slightly and then catches herself. It’s a strange new habit of hers when new people are around. She reckons it's some primal, biological part of her searching for a mate.

The red-headed man is definitely a Beta. The woman, however, is  _ definitely _ an Alpha. Her scent rolls off her, slightly metallic and smokey. It isn’t awful, but it isn’t Rey’s jam either.

“Lost another one, Solo?” The red-headed man ( _ ew, his sideburns _ ) sneers down at Ben. “You should have ordered that CAT scan an hour earlier. Any first-year intern would have known.” 

Rey assumes he’s a doctor, maybe a coworker of Ben’s, based on his words.

The tall blonde woman with the short hair stands close by, arms crossed, looking down her nose at the two men. She may even be slightly enjoying this incendiary interaction, by the little twinkle in her eye and the slight upward curve of her lip.

“Shut up, Hux,” Ben mutters, taking a sip of his whiskey.

“Why, you going to get me on a malpractice suit, like you did Sno –” 

In a flash moment, in a split second, Ben has stood up, knocking his barstool backward.

His fist makes a satisfying crack as it makes contact with Hux’s nose.

The other doctor stumbles backward, and the blonde woman rushes forward to catch him.

Hux stumbles forward, flailing slightly, but the woman stops him, holding him back.

“It’s not worth it,” she tells him. “Let’s go.” Hux wraps an arm around her shoulder and they stumble out of the bar. 

“HR will know about this!” Hux sputters back at Ben as they depart. “I’ll have your Alpha ass out the door!”

Rey blinks, realizing she’s still sitting on her stool in shock. Ben is breathing heavily, pheromones rolling off of him in waves. 

She feels  _ dizzy _ from the scent of him. Why is it stronger now? She shakes her head, trying to clear her sinuses.

After a moment of processing, she jumps to her feet. “Ben!” She exclaims, her réaction entirely delayed.

He’s heaving, breath ragged, his hand curled into a fist, his knuckles slightly red from Hux’s blood. 

“Let’s – let’s get you home,” she tells him urgently, looking over her shoulder at the bartender, who is now glowering at them but likely afraid of approaching an Alpha in this state.

_She’s_ not afraid though.

She watches as he reaches for the wallet in his back pocket. He throws down a hundred dollar bill on the bar and stumbles outside, knocking over a chair in the process.

Dr. Benjamin Solo leans up against the wall outside for a moment, before bending over and vomiting directly on Rey’s sneakers.

“Jesus fucking… hell…” Rey murmurs. She gently pats his back as he continues to cough up acrid-smelling vomit. 

He’s doubled over, hands on his knees. She peeks around his messy head of hair to get an eyeful of vomit covering her shoes. She grimaces and shakes some of it off onto the ground.

“You’re buying me new ones,” she tells him, and he grunts in response.

He finally stands up (mostly) straight. She rests a hand gently on his shoulder, trying to maneuver him forward.

“I’ll be fine,” he tries to shoo her away (it's a very half-assed wave of one hand) and stumbles away from the wall, towards the street.

She’s not entirely sober yet, but she’s also in a  _ much _ better state than he is. She frowns up at him. 

“You’re shitfaced,” she says accusingly. “You just vomited on my shoes.” Rey wanders out towards the edge of the road, arm outstretched. A taxi pulls up to the curb in a matter of seconds. 

“Get in,” she orders him. He looks at her sullenly. “Get  _ in _ .”

She wonders why she’s helping him. She wonders why she wants to. Maybe she can’t help it. Her mind drifts back to memories from recent weeks. The way he had wiped away that tear from her cheek in the emergency room, even if he hadn’t meant to. The way he had fucking  _ helped her masturbate while she was in heat.  _ How calm he had been when he had treated her at the clinic. 

While this was all likely professional courtesy, isn’t it the least she can do for him… to make sure this clusterfuck of a grown-ass man gets home safely?

Sure, that sounds reasonable enough. 

The cab driver looks over his shoulder as the fall into the back seat of the cab. “He okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Rey answers. “Uh, Ben?” She whispers. “Where do you live?”

Ben mumbles his address, and Rey relays it to the cabbie. 

They ride in silence. At one point, his knee hits hers. He’s too drunk to notice, she’s too thrilled by the sensation of their limbs touching to bother fixing the situation.

His apartment (or maybe it’s a condo, who knows) is in a fucking high rise, because of course it is. Lots of chrome on this building. Tinted windows. There is a fuck ton of modern art (which frankly looks like a toddler made it) in the lobby.

He struggles with his wallet, pulling out some sort of a security badge. He stumbles ahead of her, and she follows close behind, opening the glass front door of the building when he repeatedly tries to pull instead of push.

In the building elevator, he leans up against the far wall, his eyes cast downward. He seems to have accepted his fate for the night. He lets out a slight hiccup, followed by a burp. She tries not to giggle.

When they get to his floor and depart the elevator, he begins to stumble slightly, holding the wall for support. 

Rey swoops in, tucking herself under one of his arms so he can lean with his weight supported across her shoulders and the back of her neck.

He’s huge. She’s never been this close to him, even when he had been inside her for a pelvic exam. Because there’s so much of him now, so much of him  _ against _ her. Even with all this clothing between them. So much of his  _ warmth _ so goddamn _ close _ to her.

“You smell good,” he slurs, his nose clumsily bumping into her neck as he trips over his own feet. His nose tickles the sensitive sick of her jugular, and she trembles for a moment. She shrugs him off before they do something they both regret. 

It’s biology, it’s biology, it’s  _ pheromones _ , she chants to herself. You got this.

“It’s this one,” he stumbles up towards a huge door, painted pitch black.

He enters his apartment, holding the wall for support. “Thanks,” he mumbles, before tripping forward and catching himself on a small table in his foyer. He begins to mutter incoherently, something about “ _ lost him, done better, pathetic _ .”

She sighs. “Not to sound weird, because you’re a grown man and my doctor, but I’m tucking you in,” she announces to him, incredibly matter-of-fact. His incoherent mumbling stops.

How would he have made it home if she hadn’t smelled him on the street? If she hadn’t walked into that bar? 

Rey helps him towards his bedroom, silently hoping he knows the way through his own apartment even while plastered. 

Fortunately, he does. She deposits him on his platform bed in the fetal position. He makes a few grunts as he shifts and hugs a pillow into his chest. His shirt is untucked and has rumpled up, exposing the bare skin of his lower abdomen. A trail of dark hair is visible above the waistband of his jeans. She swallows. She begins to back away, on her tiptoes. But then he speaks.

“Don’t think I’ll be your doctor anymore, after this,” he mumbles into his pillow. She turns to look down at him.

“Best not,” she whispers, with a small smile. 

There’s something endearing, seeing a man who seemed to have it so together in his white coat, seeing him fall apart. Alphas don’t have it all, apparently. It’s so strange, seeing him out of context like this. Like when she was twelve and ran into a teacher of hers outside of school.  _ That  _ had been such a disorienting experience as well.

But she’s an adult now.  _ He’s _ an adult. And he’s so close, dozing away peacefully… a whole man unfolding before her, a whole human with nooks and crannies and skeletons in the closet. And he smells like a fucking meal. She doesn’t even mind that her shoes are still a bit damp from his vomit. Why doesn’t this bother her more?

He seems to toss and turn for a moment, mumbling. He smacks his lips, and she swears she sees him drool a bit in the dim lighting.

He grunts as his eyes flicker open, he blinks a bit in confusion. “Who’s there?” he mumbles sleepily. “Who are you?”

She stands still. After a moment, his agitation eases, and he appears to pass out. 

Who is she, he asks? 

She leans against the doorframe of his bedroom for a moment, and whispers very softly to herself, “Me? I’m just a girl who used to work in a demolition yard. But what’s  _ your _ deal, Dr. Benjamin Solo?”

She stops in his kitchen on her way out. She grabs a notepad and a pen, leaving a hastily scrawled note on his granite countertop: 

> _ You owe me new shoes. 555-2558.  _

She makes sure the door of his gorgeous apartment locks behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to [sadboykylo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadboykylo/pseuds/sadboykylo) for the Tamagotchi idea. I think I had originally thought BB-8 would be either a car or a Neopet, but here we are. Also, I wonder why Rey smells another Alpha on Poe? ;)
> 
> And thank you [spidermemes](https://spidermemes.tumblr.com/) for encouraging drunk Ben and for being a cheerleader throughout this whole process. Also for creating this incredible [gifset](https://spidermemes.tumblr.com/post/174070917693/reylo-fic-favs-temperature-by-arroways-theres) which has me in tears it's so perfect. You are so sweet and I am so grateful. <3
> 
> Also, oh god, I added a SLOW BURN tag to this fic. Woops. I should have done that before.
> 
> Let's put it this way: it's gonna be slow burn by MY STANDARDS. But you won't have to wait another 10 chapters.


	5. The Breach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He is Ben Solo, M.D. He graduated magna cum laude from an Ivy League and top of his class at medical school. 
> 
> And he is hungover. 
> 
> When you’re a colossal, rich, high-functioning privileged fuck-up surgeon like this guy, you have a mini fridge by your bed filled with Perrier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We get a little bit of Ben POV in this chapter!
> 
> So much love to [oscillateswildly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oscillateswildly/profile) and [afalsebravado](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afalsebravado/pseuds/afalsebravado) for their review/edits on this chapter. Y'all are the best.

_ Mouth. Dry. Cotton. Headache. _

_ Light. Windows. Open. Fuck. _

_ Scent. There’s that scent. It’s in his apartment. _

_ What the fuck.  _

He is Ben Solo, M.D. He graduated magna cum laude from an Ivy League and top of his class at medical school. 

And he is hungover.

When you’re a colossal, rich, high-functioning privileged fuck-up surgeon like this guy, you have a mini fridge by your bed filled with Perrier. 

Ben reaches down and over to this mini fridge with one arm outstretched. He doesn’t even have to open his eyes, he knows the way all too well. 

Christ. 

He tilts his head slightly and allows sparkling water to dribble its way into his mouth. He ends up dripping some on his sheets. 

His phone is ringing. It may have been ringing for hours, for all he knows. But his brain is only now processing the chiming ringtone going off in his jeans’ pocket.

“Mom,” he mumbles as he picks up. She’s the only one who ever calls him.

“I heard.”

He holds the phone to his ear and grunts in acknowledgment. 

“Ackbar mentioned you didn’t show up for rounds this morning. He covered for you.”

“Tell him thanks,” Ben says, his voice raspy.

“Ben, it’s been five years since–”

He groans, stopping her mid-sentence.

She exhales loudly. “You can’t do this every time a surgery goes wrong. It’s become a bit of a habit.”

“Which part? The drinking or the assault?”

She pauses. “Both.”

He grimaces as he remembers the sound of his fist hitting Hux's face. This had not been the first time. He mostly resenting the imminent altercation that awaits him at work when he returns.

That sniveling, condescending little rat.

“I’ll work on it.”

She sighs. “I’m getting old, sweetheart. I love you. I know what you’ve been through. I know how far you’ve come.”

He groans again.

“You always used to say let the past die. But now you’re just haunted by  _ ghosts _ . One day I’ll be one of them.”

His eyes flicker open and he stares at the ceiling. Is he still fully dressed? He is. He’s sleeping with his fucking shoes on. Right on his Egyptian cotton 1800 thread count sheets. This is a travesty. 

“I hear you,” he tells her quietly. 

“You need to make some friends, Benjamin.”

“Okay.”

“And call your uncle,” she prods.

“He won’t talk to me.” He pauses. “Also, he’s a quack.”

“Call your uncle,” and she hangs up. 

* * *

Ben wanders out into his kitchen after approximately forty-seven minutes of tossing and turning on his bed. Eventually, the sun had begun to beam in through the windows at precisely the right angle, meaning it was shining into his face no matter how the cookie crumbled.

He stands in his kitchen, staring at one of his cabinets for a full two minutes and twenty-four seconds before he realizes he’s effectively staring off into space.

He goes to the fridge and retrieves a bottle of boutique organic fair trade cold brew coffee. He pops an aspirin and the pills from his personalized vitamin packet. (He gets those in a monthly wellness subscription box. A gift from his mother for Hanukkah.)

His kitchen has an island – a man is an island, he thinks dramatically –  a lovely granite island his realtor told him would stand the test of time. 

He settles on one of the barstools at the island and notices something amiss. Out of place. Something that is usually not there.

It is a handwritten note. 

He narrows his eyes and lunges across the island and snatches up the paper. He holds it close to his face, squinting. He sniffs. It’s her. He’d remember that scent anywhere.

But also: He’s never owed anyone new shoes in his  _ life. What the fuck? _

_ What does this even mean? _

He is a surgeon and his brain can barely process the words on this page.

He closes his eyes as he takes another sip of cold brew and lets his mind wander back to the memories of last night. They’re fuzzy, he’s pretty sure he may have blacked out, but…

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh fuck.

So here’s the thing.

Back in his residency, Dr. Ben Solo had treated many Omegas, male and female alike. And he’d treated many attractive Omegas. It came with the territory. 

As long as he took a suppressant shot each morning before he was scheduled to treat an Omega patient, he was golden. 

The night Rey Niima had been rolled into his ER on a gurney in heat, he had  _ not  _ taken a shot. Because he was on duty in an Alpha/Beta designated hospital. 

So he had been in a very unlucky, less than ideal situation. Because he had  _ smelled _ her. Smelled an Omega in heat. It had awoken something primal in him, and he’d touched her face where that tear had been, and guilt had gripped his gut and he’d withdrawn.  He had immediately run to the pharmacy and taken an emergency stabilizer.

When she’d been desperately seeking relief in her room, even with the shot, it had been impossible to dampen his Alpha instincts and keep his mouth from watering behind his face mask as he had watched her struggle with the dildo between her legs. Guilt had racked him for days afterward. 

Thankfully, by the time she had shown up at the Takodana clinic, he had gotten his shit together. (Seriously, thank god for suppressants.) Rey was just another patient, another objectively attractive female Omega who needed his help. The memory of her scent vaguely lingered at the fringes of his mind, but he hadn't struggled to perform his duties as a doctor. 

But then last night had happened.

Oh god, how had he behaved last night?

Was he okay?

Was  _ she  _ okay?

He wasn’t sure if the bile crawling up his esophagus was due to shame or his hangover.

Maybe he shouldn’t have started with coffee. Acid churns in his stomach.

He gets up and shoves some frozen whole wheat bread into his toaster.

Ben glances back at the note, stares at it, and flinches when his toast pops out.  Then he inhales his two slices of dry toast. Crumbs fall everywhere.

He looks back down at the note. What had he done to her shoes?  He can’t even imagine. Maybe he should call her and say thank you. He must have been a mess last night.

Should he text her?

This was awkward. This was really awkward.

He was her doctor. Had she  _ tucked him into bed _ last night?

Jesus, can he do anything right?

He takes a few hours to shower and change his clothes before wandering aimlessly around his condo in bare feet.

He finally pulls out his iPhone and dials the number scribbled on the paper. He can’t take it anymore.

“Hello?”

He practically chokes on his own spit when she answers. He hadn’t thought she would actually answer. He had hoped for voicemail.

He begins to blabber. “Rey, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what happened…” His mouth feels thick and dry. His throat tightens. “I’m so sorry if I offended or hurt you. Please accept my sincerest apologies for whatever transpired last night.”

“Hey Ben,” she cuts him off. “It’s really fine. You’re fine.”

“If you’d like to file a complaint with the state medical board, I will completely understand. Especially if I crossed any lines.”

“Ben.” She sighs. “You really didn’t do anything wrong. Also, you were off the clock. You were drunk. You were surprisingly well behaved for a drunk – well, you know – in my presence.”

The unspoken acknowledgment of their biological status and pheromones and all  _ that _ ... hovers in the air.

“I’m not offended. I just want new shoes,” she chuckles. 

“I can do that.”

There’s a pause. He kicks his sofa gently.

She breaks the silence.

“Listen, I hope this doesn’t sound too weird,” she pauses, her voice becoming a bit shaky. “I don’t have many friends. I never really did. I've mostly only ever interacted with Betas my whole life,” she rambles.  “The point. The point is. I don’t really know what to expect from my life moving forward, and I’m going to this therapist or whatever but like… I could use a friend in this community. Or whatever it is. Not just people like me. But, you know. People like you.”

Ben hesitates. “I’m not sure that’s a great idea. I’m your doctor."

“You don’t have to be. You said so yourself last night.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose. 

She continues. “You’re an adult, I’m an adult, and I'm sure we can be grown-ups about this –"

He exhales and cuts her off. His mother’s voice rings in his ears.

“Okay. That actually. That actually sounds nice,” he pauses. “I could use a friend too.”

If it’s possible, he  _ hears _ her smile into the other end of the phone. It’s impossible to stop the corners of his own mouth from twitching upward.

What a strange new sensation.

* * *

Rey manages to make it to Monday’s appointment with Luke without totally losing her mind to cabin fever.

She’s also thrilled because Poe had reached out to her at the end of last week, after the whole Ben debacle, with a connection at a partnering temp agency.

Rose had also given her a call about working at Cruiser Coffee as a part-time keyholder. It was all they had available in the short-term. Apparently, her managerial experience at the demo yard counted for something. She had gone in for a quick orientation on Sunday. 

“And Rose is super nice, and she gave me the keys, and I barely know how to make a latte but I know I can help with the scheduling and supply management and the invoicing,” Rey is rambling at Luke excitedly, waving her hands in the air.

Luke stops her, holding his own two hands up. “Rey, this is a consultation, remember?” His voice is calm and level. He leans back in his leather chair. A wind chime rings just outside the window behind him.

Luke’s “office” is in the basement of his bungalow at the edge of town. She had taken two buses to get here, and knew in her heart that this wasn’t something she could do frequently. But it was a start. 

Rey takes a moment to breathe before nodding in understanding.

“Tell me what you’re looking for. Let’s see if I can help you,” he guides her.

Rey gulps. “I just. There’s this new part of me.”

“You’ve presented as an Omega later in life.”

“Yes, yes. And there’s a lot that’s been going on and I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t have a family or many people who understand and I feel alone and I’m confused,” she babbles nervously once more. 

“You want answers,” he states. 

She nods in response.

“I can do my best, but neither I nor even Google will have all those answers,” he says with a small chuckle.

She rolls her eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to psychoanalyze me or something?”

He purses his lips. “If you’d like. But I don’t think that’s what you’re asking for.”

“There’s all this going on,” she points down  _ there _ as meekly as she can.

He chuckles softly. “Yes, I can understand that. The same thing happened to me.”

She flushes slightly, her mind awkwardly imagining this middle-aged man going through the same thing she’s going through right now. 

“And I lost my old job because of it,” she adds.

He tilts his head sympathetically. “I’m happy to help you adjust in those aspects of your life. Maybe be a coach.”

She nods eagerly. “Someone to help me through this process.”

“Rey,” he sighs heavily, clasping his hands together. He gets down to business. “I’m no longer running the Yavin support group, and I am partially retired from my practice here. I am happy to help you on a part-time basis but off the record – I am not saying this as a therapist and more as a fellow Omega who has been through what you’re going through: I want to say that your journey is your own. I really do encourage you to reach out to new friends, and meet up with other members of the community.”

“Alphas as well?” Her mind wanders to her conversation with Ben last week. He still owed her new shoes.

Luke gives her a thin smile. “Can’t hurt. They have their own perspective. Their own place in this world. Their own difficulties and stigmas to work through.”

She decides not to mention Ben. She’s not sure why. She just keeps that to herself. She doesn’t have to share _everything_ with her therapist. Right?

_ Right? _

* * *

Rose is babbling as she walks Rey through the Cruiser Coffee storage room. “We’ll start you at twenty hours a week, and work you up to a customer-facing role. I know you’re more comfortable working behind the scenes. Not with people. But the regional manager was really impressed with your personnel management skills from your old position. That’s something we need here.”

Rey gives her a small smile. “I’m a quick learner.”

“And there’s something Finn wanted me to mention to you,” Rose pauses, holding a plastic bag filled with straws. “They do this thing here, for young adults? It’s this college achievement type thing. They work with the local community college or whatever. I’m actually about to graduate with an associate’s transfer degree in engineering. So like, I can go get my four-year and stuff.” Rose fiddles with the straws.

Rey feels her heart fill with joy. “Seriously?”

“Yeah it’s – it’s cool. Finn wanted me to mention that to you. If you’re interested.”

“Rose, thank you so much. I can’t tell you how grateful I am-“

Rose dismisses her with a wave of her hand. “We have to stick together, you know?” She lowers her voice conspiratorially. “Betas have it easy. They don’t get the same dirty looks we do.”

Rey pounces forward and envelops Rose in a warm hug. The young woman’s Alpha scent is sweet and comforting. Rose hugs her back.

“So an Omega can really just be friends with an Alpha?” Rey says jokingly. This gives her a bit of hope. Maybe she isn't barking up the wrong tree with Ben after all. 

Rose guffaws. “I would hope so. Honestly, I could never mate with Poe, for instance. He needs a stronger hand, and he  _ has _ one –” Rose glances around as if someone might be listening, “– but he’s a good friend. He really is. And as long as Finn’s happy...” she trails off.

Rey smiles, sensing the warmth coming from Rose. There’s so much she’s learning. 

But one thing is for sure. She doesn’t feel so alone anymore. 

* * *

“What size are you?”

Rey blinks as she adjusts her hair into a bun at the top of her head, her phone nestled precariously between her ear and shoulder.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m at the store. Looking at sneakers. I owe you new shoes, remember?”

Rey chuckles, her Nokia flip phone falling to the floor as she does so.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” She yells. “Ben! If you can hear me, I dropped my phone!” She shouts as she scrambles to the floor and fetches her busted phone from under her futon.

“You still there?” Rey asks as she holds the phone back up to her ear. The screen is now cracked.

“What’s your favorite color?”

Rey smiles. She glances across her studio, to the open door of her bathroom, where a flower leans in an empty coffee can. 

“Red, definitely red. And I’m a size eight.”

“And you had on…”

“Sneakers. I need sneakers. Thank you, by the way.” She grins. She never thought he’d actually follow through. 

There’s a pause, the sound of rustling as he moves around. She can hear the faint sound of shopping jazz music. 

“It’s the least I can do,” he mumbles. 

She holds the phone to her ear, unsure of how to respond just then.

“Do you want me to just drop these off? Or we could grab a coffee?”

Rey glances down at the sheet of paper she had printed from Cruiser Coffee, checking her schedule.

“I work later today. Do you want to meet at Cruiser Coffee?”

He pauses. She can hear him make a sound as he hesitates. “That – that’s not a good idea. How about the smoothie place two blocks away? Jabba Juice?”

She shrugs to herself, making a mental note to interrogate him about the secrecy. “Sure. How’s three o’clock?”

* * *

"Why the cloak and dagger routine?” She prods him as they settle at a rickety wooden table in the back corner of the smoothie shop. Her new sneakers rest on the bench beside her. He had tied them up in red wrapping paper and handwritten a note on the gift tag.

Ben is busy peeking over at the customers and other tables, out the door. 

“Uh, well,” Ben sucks down his protein shake, “I used to…” he hesitates again, “date,” another delicate pause, “a guy in college who hangs out at Cruiser a lot now. We both went to the same Ivy League.”

Rey tilts her head expectantly. He sighs. 

“He got me interested in Omega health as a pre-med, I guess. We were friends in medical school when he started working for this nonprofit –”

_ Fuck, did he mean Finn’s boyfriend? _

_ “–  _ but later, we had a falling out when I did my fellowship in trauma. I was supposed to work with that nonprofit, see. And it fell through. I got the offer with Snoke.”

Rey loudly slurps her own smoothie. 

“I’ve been volunteering at the clinic again,” he waves his hand towards her, “as you know. But I haven’t really been able to gain back the trust of that whole,” he shrugs, sighing, “that whole group of his.”

She delicately sets her smoothie back down on the table. “Wow,” she says.

“There’s –" he hesitates, and she sees the tip of his ears go red. “There’s been a lot that’s going on. And I haven’t worked with Snoke in years,” his voice breaks up slightly.

He drags his gaze back to meet hers. “Trying to fix a lot of the things I fucked up.”

She nods silently. “Thanks for telling me all this,” she says. 

“Do you like ice hockey?” He blurts out, possibly attempting to change the strange vibes. 

She blinks. “I like hockey.” It wasn’t a lie. She  _ did  _ like hockey. She had even briefly played it in high school. But he seemed _very enthused_ about ice hockey.

“My team might take the Cup. We’re well on our way. Just a few weeks more. Do you want to watch a hockey game together sometime?”

When she doesn’t answer for a moment, he clarifies: “Like, the whole friend thing. You had said.”

Rey grins. “We can watch hockey together, Ben.”

* * *

Over the next couple weeks, they watch a few hockey games together at various bars around the city. He has a strange schedule as a surgeon, but they make it work.

They even try a baseball game at his house, one afternoon. There’s something mindless about this. She gets excited, follows his enthusiasm.

It’s a sense of camaraderie she’s never felt before. It’s more of a fantasy than finding community with other Alphas or Omegas.

This is something simple, straightforward.

She couldn’t tell you all the player names or the rankings or anything special, but she could tell you that watching the puck travel across the ice is a distraction from her life. At least for a little while. Watching a ball fly through the air and allowing her anxiety to settle on whether or not the batter will hit it, well, that’s something easy to be anxious about. She tenses and grins when a bat makes a satisfying  _ thwack _ with the baseball.

She laughs and cheers on the hockey players who get into heated debates on the ice. She winces when they hit the sideboards. 

And Ben, Ben is there.

It’s not that he’s necessarily hiding something. But there’s always something beneath the surface she can’t ever put her finger on.

One day, in his bathroom, she gets a bit cheeky and peruses his meticulously organized cabinets. Under his sink, shoved to the back of the cabinet and covered in dust, she finds an expired canister of a supplement labeled “KnotMaxx 5000.” She drops the canister as if it had burned her, and hastily shoves it back deep into the cabinet.

Another weekend, while sneaking around his fancy condo, she notices a framed photograph in his study. She recognizes his mother Leia and a taller man beside her, holding a dark-haired baby Ben. She assumes the man is his father, based on the chin and the sharp facial features.

When she brings this up and tries to casually ask about his family, Ben blanches.  He “suddenly” gets a page on his phone from the hospital. 

She learns not to bring up the father thing again. 

One afternoon, to her mortification, she learns that Luke Skywalker is his uncle. 

She’s lounging on his couch, sipping a Perrier and rambling about the broken healthcare system. “I tried going to one of those support groups. But this one guy, Luke, said he wasn’t running it anymore. So he’s sort of my therapist now.”

Ben laughs loudly from his kitchen before remarking, “My uncle is a quack.”

“Excuse me?”

“Skywalker, right?” Ben chuckles as he pours himself a beer and settles next to her on his West Elm couch.

“Yeah…” Rey wrinkles her forehead.

“He’s my uncle.”

“He’s helping me,” Rey shoots back at him, her voice tense. “Don’t call him a quack.”

“Pfft,” Ben blows air. 

Was this a trait, with this family? This… whatever this was. His  _ behavior _ . The pfft thing, for instance, like Luke has done.

“Fine, I’m sure you’ve never experienced any hardship  _ ever _ ,” Rey’s voice begins to rise in volume. “You have no idea what it’s like, being alone, here in your gorgeous apartment on your surgeon’s salary, buying,” she kicks the glass coffee table in front of her, “lovely furniture.” Her voice has now gone high and shaky.

She gets up off the couch and grabs her coat, hockey game forgotten. “Not everyone comes from  _ privilege _ , Ben Solo. Some of us need the extra help.”

She breathes heavily, watching him. Something flashes in his eyes and he grips his beer tighter. His lip press together.

“You should go,” he murmurs, something dark in his voice. His scent is rolling off him in waves once more. It fills the room between them. 

She can  _ smell _ his anger and discomfort. 

Could he smell hers the same way?

“Fine,” she snaps back, making sure to slam his door shut with a satisfying bang behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to the "KnotMaxx 5000" idea goes to [@blessmycircuits](https://twitter.com/blessmycircuits).
> 
>  
> 
> **AND NOW FOR A LONG AUTHOR'S NOTE ON CONSENT, FANTASY, ETC.:**
> 
> I did a little bit of research into relationships between doctors and patients. For the sake of fanfiction, I'm asking for some suspense of disbelief. [It is considered malpractice for doctors to engage in relationships with their former patients.](https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/sexual-relationships-with-patients.html)
> 
> For the purpose of this story, I'm approaching it as a consensual relationship between two (somewhat) mature adults. This story should (naturally) not be taken as realistic. I'm just putting this as a side note. Better safe than sorry. <3
> 
> I'm going to put some time between Rey's time as Ben's patient before they engage in any sexual activity, but yeah, this is fanfiction and it's supposed to be fun. I wanted to acknowledge that I'm completely aware of the implications and power imbalance between a doctor and their patient, mostly because I'm concerned re: consent and writing a story exploring these dynamics.
> 
> TLDR; Rey and Ben are adults in this story, going through their own issues, and every interaction they have will be portrayed as consensual. Again, feel free to shoot me a message on Tumblr with any concerns. <3
> 
> **anyway. next chapter. the fuckening has arrived. prepare yourselves**


	6. Water Under the Bridge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re playing with fire, Omega.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **the fuckening has arrived**
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you [afalsebravado](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afalsebravado/pseuds/afalsebravado) and [oscillateswildly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oscillateswildly/profile) for reviewing this chapter. Y'all are my cheerleaders and kept me sane during this really nutty week and I appreciate you. 
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to [spidermemes](https://spidermemes.tumblr.com/), but like, not in a weird way. 
> 
> Before we delve into this chapter, I just want to reiterate my note from the last chapter that I'm fully aware that in reality, an intimate relationship between a doctor and a patient is considered malpractice. Fortunately, this is fantasy/fanfiction and anything goes. **If this squicks you, this isn't the fic for you.** After careful consideration, I have chosen not to place a dubcon tag on this fic because I do consider these two individuals to be engaging in a relationship that is entirely consensual. They're shitty with their communication skills, but I promise you these two are totally into it.
> 
> Anyway. There's some medical/clinical kink type stuff in this chapter.
> 
> MOVING ON.

They don’t speak for approximately two weeks.

Rey nervously checks the screen of her cracked Nokia flip phone each day. She remembers dropping it when he had called her that one time. She still hasn’t been able to get the screen repaired. She’s not sure if she  _ wants  _ to see a phone call or text from him. 

Each night, she curls up on her futon, trying to fall asleep, holding the last shirt she had worn when she was with him close to her face because his scent still lingers on the cotton. 

She and Finn are friends. She does not think about the fact that Finn’s scent does not comfort her or fill her with quite the same type of warmth that Ben’s scent does. And like Rose had said, Alphas and Omegas  _ could  _ just be friends. This was just some weird pheromone phenomenon.

* * *

Rey focuses on moving her life forward. It’s all she  _ can _ do, at this point.

She submits an application for Cruiser Coffee’s tuition reimbursement program at the local community college. 

Rey ends up enrolling in an evening class that meets once a week. She considers a business degree and takes a class in marketing. Rose even recruits her to assist with local outreach efforts for the coffee franchise.

One day, she wanders by the old demolition yard. She’s not sure why, but something nags at the back of her mind.

_ What if they came looking for her? What if her parents came to find her, and she wasn’t here? Would Plutt turn them away?  _

_ Had they come back? Would they come back?  _

It takes an incredible amount of self-control to not wander into the yard’s management office and ask if anyone had come searching for a Rey Niima. 

* * *

Rey goes in to interview for the temp agency gig Poe had set up for her. The agency is partnered with Poe’s nonprofit in some fashion. With the anticipation of her imminent heat on her shoulders, she feels trepidation at the notion of a new, hectic schedule.

The temp agency office is in a more suburban part of the city, on the second floor of a brownstone with pastel painted walls.

When she’s called into the hiring manager’s office, the familiar scent of lavender overwhelms her.

She realizes she recognizes this scent from two places: one, from Poe Dameron. And two: from the office of one Dr. Leia Organa. 

Her mind processes the scent before she even makes eye contact with the Alpha (she knows the person is an Alpha before she’s even crossed the threshold of the open door), a middle-aged slender woman with coiffed, loosely curled purple hair. The woman wears silver jewelry and a mauve jumpsuit, and Rey hopes she can achieve half this style and class when she finally gets her shit together.

“Amilyn Holdo,” the woman offers as she extends a delicate hand (with a surprisingly strong grip, Rey realizes as she shakes it). “Poe has told me only a little about you.”

Rey can  _ smell _ Poe on her. She can also smell Dr. Organa. It’s strange how over the past few weeks, her brain’s olfactory center has begun to process away scents and associate them with people. It’s a strange new ability. 

“Rey,” she replies, not acknowledging her revelation. “Rey Niima. I’m a friend of Finn’s.”

Holdo tilts her head slightly, maybe curiously. Had Rey committed yet another faux pas? Should she not have mentioned Poe’s boyfriend in the presence of someone who was so clearly Poe’s Alpha?

Rey closes her eyes quickly and takes a deep breath. Inhale. Exhale. 

The strange moment seems to pass between them, and Holdo motions toward a chair. Rey plops down in it with as much professionalism as she can muster. The plush velvet chair sits in front of a rich mahogany desk, meticulously organized with steel and glass office organizational supplies. 

Holdo holds up what Rey recognizes as her resume. She notices the woman has silver nail polish, each nail filed into a smooth round tip.

“I see you’re taking a marketing class at Chandrila Community,” Holdo remarks, reaching over to her desk to pull on a pair of reading glasses. 

Rey nods silently. 

“Part-time at Cruiser Coffee as a keyholder. Six years at Jakku Demolition, and four of those appear to have been in a somewhat managerial role.”

“Right,” Rey says.

“It’s not often anymore we get a young person in your situation,” Holdo lowers her voice slightly. She seems softer now. 

Rey looks away, down at her knees, and then out the window of the office. The branches of a maple tree hits the glass window panes gently in a breeze. 

“Anyway,” Holdo continues, presumably sensing Rey’s discomfort. “We have a protocol and work plan available for you. We can start you with a probationary period, and move forward from there.”

Rey snaps her gaze back up to meet Holdo’s. She’s unable to suppress the wide grin that spreads across her face. “Thank you,” she says softly. She feels tears brim at the corner of her eyes. 

“You’ll need to meet with Human Resources regarding your expected leave. And, we do have a basic health insurance option thanks to the Resistance's efforts with the local insurance marketplace.”

Rey’s heart leaps. Health insurance? At a part-time gig? A few weeks ago, in the hospital, she thought her life was over. But it seemed like some people in this world were maybe looking out for her. Whether they knew her or her story, or whether they didn’t. Maybe – just maybe – everything was going to be okay. 

She just needed to be patient.

* * *

At a session with Luke, she briefly breaks down at the realization that she’ll be working two part-time jobs and attending night classes. Her life had always been so boring and straightforward before all this Omega stuff. Clock in to the yard at eight, clock out at five. Go home. Cook a straightforward meal. Browse Pinterest. Sleep. She misses the familiarity, safety, and redundancy of her old humdrum Beta lifestyle.

“Do you think you can’t handle it?” he asks.

“Of course I can handle it. It’s just. I’m supposed to have another heat soon. I’m nervous. I’m not prepared. What if something goes wrong?”

“Then you will handle it,” he reassures her.

She’s too chickenshit, maybe understandably so, to discuss the distinctly sexual nature of her anxieties with Luke. 

* * *

Eventually, nearing the end of the second week with no contact, she sullenly calls Ben and extends an olive branch in the form of a baked loaf of bread.

She had gripped the phone as she dialed his number, terrified he would reject it. Terrified that he would reject  _ her _ .

She doesn’t apologize, per se. But she gently deposits the bread, wrapped delicately in wax paper and twine, upon his granite countertop. They come to some silent, unspoken agreement to not talk about what had transpired, not yet. They choose not to acknowledge it. Those pieces will fall into place when they’re ready.

They begin to hang out again like they did before. They go back to watching sports together. She starts wearing sweatpants around him. She doesn’t feel the need to shower every time before she goes over to his place.

He even comes over to her dingy studio apartment one day and helps her fix her air conditioning. Rey could have done it herself, but she wanted him here. She wanted him to come to her home. See a part of her he hadn’t seen before. Even though she’s hyper-aware of her tiny square footage and the second-hand IKEA furniture.

“I like it,” Ben tells her, his eyes wandering around the space. They seem to twinkle as he takes it all in. “It’s you. It smells like you.”

She flushes.

Later that same day, she finally, gently prods him about what had happened.

She’s no longer afraid he’ll run for the door if they dare talk about it.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, almost too softly for him to hear.

“You were right about some of it,” he mumbles. He can’t look at her. They’re sprawled on her futon, staring up at the ceiling. His long legs hang comically off the edge of the cushion. “And I am privileged.” He tilts his head away to look out her window. “But,” his voice gets even quieter, if that were possible, “I do know what it’s like to be alone.” 

Maybe he had thought about what he would say, all these weeks. Maybe he rehearsed it over and over in his head. But at the end of the day, it’s water under the bridge.

They leave it at that. She curls onto her side and watches him. Allows her eyes to drift along the sharp angles of his face. His big ears, visible beneath the tangled mop of hair on his head. She wants to ask him about so much: about that night at the bar, what had happened, why he had gotten so drunk. Why had he punched his coworker? She wanted to ask him about his college tryst with the Omega she suspected was Poe.

Instead, she bites her tongue. They end up drifting off into a short cat nap. 

When she wakes, he’s gone, and her futon smells painfully of Ben Solo. He’s left a note on her counter about getting paged for an emergency surgery, and she crawls back into bed, clutching the note to her chest and crying softly into the paper until the ink runs and her chest feels hollow.

* * *

The knowledge of her imminent heat is weighing heavily on Rey one Sunday afternoon. Without a smartphone, she cannot sign up for one of the numerous online “mating” apps. She’s too embarrassed to go to the library and use a website option.

All this is racing through her mind as she and Ben are watching the semi-finals for the Cup. It’s back to how it was, but occasionally, these days, their knees touch. Or she rests her feet on his lap. Occasionally, she falls asleep on the couch at his place, because he lives fairly close to Cruiser Coffee and she has those awful four a.m. shifts.

“Ben, we’re friends, right?” She feels the gears in her mind turning. Her anxiety is three steps ahead of her.

He nods, not taking his eyes off the hockey game. His gaze flits as they watch the players and the puck whizz across his huge plasma flat screen. 

“And you’re a doctor,” she continues.

“You’re very observant,” he remarks, holding his hands up in frustration as the opposing team scores a goal. It’s clear he’s only half paying attention to her musings. 

She nudges him with her foot. “So you know the human body.”

This finally gets her a quick glance before he refocuses on the television. He shifts on the couch cushions. 

“That is correct.” There’s something almost clinical, professional in his voice at that. Like, yes, he happens to be a surgeon,  _ what are you getting at Rey? _

She hums and scoots closer to him on the couch. “Particularly  _ Omega _ anatomy.”

This finally earns a swallow. He looks away from the game and settles his gaze on her. 

“Where are you going with this?” he asks tentatively. 

“So here’s the thing,” she mumbles. “I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

“You’re sitting on my couch watching a hockey game.”

“Ben.” She huffs. “I don’t know what I’m doing _ ,”  _ she accompanies this with a wave of her hand over her groin. “And I’m about to go into heat. Alone.”

He narrows his eyes. “And I’m the best person to assist you with this dilemma,” he replies with a hint of sarcasm.

“Stop it,” she swats him playfully. “You’ve vomited on my shoes. You’re no longer my doctor. We watch hockey together.” She pauses. “Plus, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”

He raises his eyebrows. “I don’t… I mean…”

“You’re literally perfect for this. You’re a doctor but like you’re no longer  _ my _ doctor so it’s not weird, you’re my friend,” she speaks faster, “I trust you, please.”

His eyes search her face. 

She can practically  _ feel _ his scent spike. Is this a good idea, with the whole  _ friends _ thing? She’s not sure she gives a flying fuck.

“It’s a bit frowned upon, in the medical community, to engage in –” he starts to tells her.

She interrupts. “Ben. There’s not a lot of other –  _ anyone _ – I would trust to ask about this. And it’s not like you’re taking advantage of me.”

He shakes his head in agreement.  "I wouldn't." But still, he hesitates. “Are you sure?” He worries at his bottom lip.

She rolls her eyes. “If at any point I want to stop I’ll let you know. You can just. I mean,” she once again waves her hand over her lower abdomen, “show me how it’s done.”

“You mean show you how to touch yourself.”

She blows a puff of air out of her cheeks. “I mean, you’ve done it before.”

He blanches. “That was standard – that was – in a hospital situation – any other doctor would have –”

She swats his arm again. “Chill. I’m fucking with you.”

He tries to smile. He lets out a breath, too. She sees his eyes twinkle again. “You’re playing with fire,  _ Omega _ .”

Something unforgiving and searing pools in her groin. 

“Let’s do it now,” she whispers. She’s grateful that  _ this _ time, she did in fact shower before coming over.

Maybe part of her subconsciously had been planning this the whole day. Ever since she had glanced at her suppressant prescription and counted down the days to her next heat.

Ben glances back at the hockey game, and then back at the lithe, pleading Omega asking him to  _ show her how pleasure works _ .

“I mean I guess,” he goes to shut off the television but she stops him.

“You can leave it on. It’ll make this less weird.” She likes the familiarity of the game on in the background, putting her at ease.

He nods in agreement. 

“Okay,” he swallows, getting right down to business. “Take off your pants.”

She flushes, unprepared for the heat that would accompany his words.

Her logical brain is telling her this is a  _ terrible _ idea.  _ Friends, remember? _ The more primal part of her is jumping up and down in glee.

Still, her fingers make their way to the waistband of her yoga pants and she slides them off. His eyes travel along the expanse of her legs, slightly tan and covered in freckles. They silently agree to leave her shirt on. 

_ Alphas and Omegas can be friends even if they’re fucking, remember, Rey. This doesn’t have to be complicated. _

“And those,” he nods at her undies. 

Here’s the thing. Rey had recently gone to a waxing center. Because she had a Groupon. Because she was employed once more. Because she wanted to feel fancy or sexy or something. Also, it was nearly summer. And Finn was constantly telling her to  _ treat herself  _ with one of her new paychecks.

And suddenly, she remembers that the last time Ben Solo had seen her business, she had been sporting a full bush.

He’s going to think she had planned for this or something. The showering, the waxing. She hesitates for a second, but soon the undies join her yoga pants on the floor and her thighs are clenched tightly together and Ben looks like he’s gone to another plane of existence altogether. 

This escalated quickly.

Something shifts in the room. It’s intangible, but it’s a scent. It’s an emotion. It’s a vague fog. It’s heavy between them, and Ben’s hands are on her knees and he’s slowly parting her thighs, letting her legs fall open as he positions himself in the space between her feet. He’s still fully clothed, his shirt sleeves rolled up around his elbows, which makes this way more depraved than she had thought it would be.

_ I don’t know what you expected. _

“Rey,” he swallows again, dragging his gaze up to lock his eyes with hers. “Are you sure about this?”

“Never been more sure in my life,” she squeaks out in one breath. 

His eyes travel down her body, pausing at the apex of her thighs. They widen slightly when he notices the neat triangle of pubic hair upon her mons, and her bare folds, Brazilian waxed and ready to go. 

She’s not in heat, and yet she can still feel slick moisture pool  _ there _ , and then:

“This is your labia,” he whispers, running his index finger along her soft folds gently. She gasps. He’s barely touching her, and yet her hips jerk up in response. He pulls his finger back, not allowing her the additional contact she seeks.

“Okay,” she says. “Keep going.” She’s unable to meet his eyes and instead allows hers to flutter shut. 

“This,” the rough pad of his index finger rubs against the bundle of nerves at the top of her folds that she knows logically feels good from past experience and yet  _ this is unspeakably good _ , “is your clitoris.”

She nods, biting her bottom lip. 

“Look at me,” he orders.

Her eyes fly open and she stares into his brown eyes as a flash of pleasure floods her veins when she follows his command.

“Good,” he says, and she nearly whimpers at the praise. 

His finger begins to make small, practiced circles against her clit and she bites her bottom lip harder. 

“Oh my god,” she says as she exhales. She’s done this to herself before. It has  _ not _ felt this good. She’s also pretty sure she’s done it to herself exactly, precisely the way he’s doing it now. And yet. 

“Some prefer it slow,” he tells her as he continues his pace. She nods. “You can try different patterns,” and he begins to move his finger in indiscernible, unpredicted motions, and she’s not sure her thighs can spread any farther apart. Her hands jerk towards the couch cushions and she grips the fabric, her muscles taut with tension.

“Ben,” she whimpers, her head falling back against the pillow behind her. 

“We’ve barely even gotten started,” he tells her. 

She opens her eyes slightly to squint at him. “What else is there?” 

Rey wasn’t sure she would ever describe this man as capable of  _ smirking _ . And yet, there’s something mischievous in his eye as his lips curve gently upward, and he appears to calculate the situation. 

“Rey,” he says, “there’s so much more.” His single finger drifts down slightly and presses at her sopping wet entrance.

He’s barely inside of her, it’s just the tip of his index finger, but her eyes fly open the rest of the way and she sits up on her elbows abruptly.

“Ben,” she gasps. “Keep doing that.”

This is… very different from a pelvic exam. This is drastically different. 

He’s got big hands. He’s got really long, thick fingers. She’s felt them before. And now he’s… oh, my god.

“You’ll want to find the right angle to enter your vaginal canal.” He begins to press his index finger more deeply inside of her. “Omegas are naturally predisposed to better self-lubrication than an Alpha or a Beta,” he adds. 

He removes his finger and holds it up in the light. She sees his finger glisten with moisture. She swallows. Is she still breathing?

He drops his hand back between her thighs and begins to press in once more. 

He’s one finger in and two knuckles deep when he stops moving, and she nearly whines. 

“As an Omega, you’re lucky to have particularly erogenous zones in two different areas. Again, a little perk just for you,” his voice has dropped and he’s begun to lean farther over her. He shifts his weight onto his left hand, and she feels his finger curl deep within her. 

“One of these zones is the anterior fornix,” he says, pressing at some spot really  _ fucking _ deep inside of her. “While unlikely to bring you to climax, it assists in lubrication and arousal. It’s located by the cervix,” he continues as he presses his finger into this spot. “I should note that not all your partners may be able to reach this zone through manual stimulation. You may benefit from penetrative intercourse if you enjoy this.”

He leans farther over her so that his head is directly above her face and he’s making incredibly intense eye contact with her.

“Are you enjoying this, Rey?” His voice is so low and barely above a whisper. She holds back, she’s trying to hold back, but she can’t help it: she lets out a deep moan.

She can feel the moan  _ vibrate _ between them.

She nods up at him as her breath quickens.

The sensation of him pressing against this anterior –  _ whatever _ – spot is indescribable. She feels herself slicken even more, if it were possible. She’s so sure she’s going to stain his West Elm couch. She hears wet, sloppy sounds from between her thighs.

“Try and regulate your breathing,” he orders. “It’s tempting to increase your respiratory rate, but if you monitor your breathing, you’ll achieve a more satisfying climax.”

She nods again, beginning to inhale and exhale on counts of three. Another wave of pleasure rolls through her as she acquiesces to his command. She  _ wants him _ to tell her what to do.

It’s clear he’s not done. “Another spot,” his breath tickles her jaw, “is the Grafenberg spot.”

His finger drags along the slick flesh of her inner walls and curls upwards, slightly closer to her entrance. Not as deep. Still incredible.

“More commonly known as the g-spot,” he adds. His finger applies pressure to where it’s curled, and she’s so sure she just bit down on her lip hard enough to draw blood.

“Ben,” she gasps out. Electricity jolts through her. 

“This spot becomes swollen during arousal,” he murmurs, glancing down between her thighs. “And yours is very, very swollen. I can feel it.”

She feels her pulse in her throat.

“As a female Omega, this spot can be stimulated during penetrative intercourse, and some Omegas enjoy the sensation of an Alpha knotting them due to the location of this spot.”

She feels dizzy. She notices, even in the dim lighting of his living room, his pupils blown wide and a sheen of sweat covering his forehead.

“Rey,” his voice changes slightly. “I’m going to add a second finger.”

Her eyes drift closed and she nods dreamily. 

_ Do whatever you want to me, Alpha.  _

She's so wet that - with an embarrassing wet squelch - his second finger slides in, stretching and filling her in an indescribable way. The only way she knows how to react is to throw her head back and allow a keening sound to unwittingly escape from somewhere deep within her chest.

He’s now pressing two fingers against the rough, swollen flesh of her g-spot. His fingers make beckoning motions, and he studies her face intently, watching her reactions. 

“Some Omegas find manual stimulation and climax just like this satisfactory during a heat,” he offers casually. “Others do not. Others may crave something more.”

Does he mean that this little endeavor could prove futile in the long run? 

She feels hot. She hadn’t felt precisely like this even during her heat. It’s a different type of warmth. The back of her mind tells her it’s because she’s here, with him, and his scent is everywhere, and it’s  _ him –  _ she stops that train of thought.

“Can I ask you a question?” she manages to squeak.

Ben pauses his movements. 

“Why does this feel so much better than when I was in the hospital? In heat?” she asks. 

“Well, you were drugged and on a number of sedatives. That isn’t surprising.”

“So my heat. My next heat,” there’s concern at the edge of her voice. 

“You will likely experience a more increased arousal response than you encountered during your stay in the hospital, yes.”

She feels anxiety coil in her chest, and he must sense her unease, because he begins to gently curl both his fingers within her once more. Only this time, he presses the pad of his thumb against her clit. 

Her hips jerk upwards and she almost crawls into his lap. 

“Oh my god,” she moans, her anxiety quickly abating. 

“How’s that?” he asks. 

He begins to set a punishing pace. His fingers are deft, skilled. Surgeon’s fingers. His thumb presses circles against her clit as his fingers move within her, curving into her deliciously. 

She fucking  _ thrashes _ against the cushions and begins to chant. She can’t help it. His fingers are perfect and his scent is a thick fog around her. Sandalwood. Rain. Bread.

“Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben,” each utterance of his name falls from her lips as a plea. She seeks that precipice, she grasps for it.

Her hips have shimmied their way onto his knees, where he kneels before her.

He lowers his head and presses his nose into her neck and whispers, once, “Rey.”

With that, she reaches her peak.

Her orgasm is wet and warm and fills her with what she would like to describe as champagne bubbles but it’s so much more than that. It’s a summer thunderstorm. It’s the way lightning strikes, it’s the way a wave crashes into the shore.

Her limbs go limp and her jaw falls open and she stares at the ceiling far above her as pulse after pulse of warmth dissipates through her veins. 

“ _ Alpha,” _ she moans, unbidden. It had come from somewhere deep within her. Something desperate. Something raw, an itch she could have ignored but longed to scratch. Saying it, saying it out loud, helps her orgasm fade out with warmth and finality. 

Her eyes flutter shut, and she’s acutely aware of the way his face, his lips and nose, are pressing into her neck. 

He lifts himself off her. He gently removes his fingers from within her. 

He glances down at his lap.

“You got me wet,” he murmurs with a raspy voice, referring to his damp jeans.

“Payback,” she says breathlessly, “for that time you threw up on me.”

He groans and runs a finger along her red, swollen pussy. She flinches. 

“Too much,” she says, stopping him.

Only it wasn’t. She wants all of him, and she’s suddenly hyper-aware of everything. Hyper-aware of every part of her body where they’re still touching. 

She disentangles herself from him and stands, bending over slightly to pull on her discarded undies and yoga pants. 

She can’t meet his eyes. She’s not sure what she’ll find there. She’s particularly afraid of what he’ll see in hers. 

“Rey,” he begins to say.

“Thank you, this was amazing, I just,” she sputters unintelligibly. “We’re friends and you – this was – I just – I don’t want to fuck anything up – and you’re, you’re so –"

She barely glances at him, at his long hair and his warm eyes and he’s broad and he’s  _ there _ and she can smell him and she’s flushed and flustered and she’s grabbing her purse and running for the door. 

And Ben, Ben Solo, he should run after her.

He wants to pull her into his arms and allow her to rest her head against his chest and hold her as her breath evens out. Tell her it’s okay, it’s all okay. He wants to run a hand through her hair and soothe her. 

It’s all okay. 

But instead, he watches as she leaves, unable to meet his eyes, pulling the door shut gently behind her.

He rests his hands, still heavy with her scent and slick, against his face, as he doubles over and lets out a loud, frustrated groan. 

Then, after a few shallow breaths, he stands and pulls his belt out of the loops on his jeans. He pulls his pants off.

With one hand, he presses the damp fabric, heady with the scent of her, to his face, as he reaches down into his briefs and grips his dick. 

He inhales her, the scent of her, thick and musky and salty and she smells like the ocean, when you stand at the edge of the surf and there’s salt and sea in the air. She smells like jasmine and the hint of a campfire. 

He comes after thrusting up into his hand three times. His spend is sticky across his hand, oozing through his fingers, and he groans into the wet denim fabric. His knot pulses slightly, red and hot and thick and wholly unsatisfied. 

It’s only then that he peeks at the television and notices his team had won. They were advancing to the Cup finals. 

He’s unable to muster any excitement.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **who's going to tell Ben that's not how a tutorial works and this likely wasn't the most effective way of achieving their goal**
> 
>  
> 
> he's a terrible teacher she probably won't remember half of what he said in the morning
> 
>  
> 
> [Am I out of my head? / Am I out of my mind? / If you only knew the bad things I like / Don't think that I can explain it / What can I say, it's complicated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpbQ4I3Eidg)


	7. Inexplicably

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you [tobemadeofglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/t0bemadeofglass/pseuds/t0bemadeofglass) for helping me get through this chapter today. I never do very well around Father's Day/Mother's Day, so distracting myself by writing was a good option today.
> 
> Sorry for the delay here, y'all. I know last week I spoiled folks with three chapters in a short period of time. Unfortunately, I've been having a bad mental health week. I really wanted to stick to my promise of updates at least once a week, though, so here we are! Either way, writing is a great distraction and coping mechanism for me. :)
> 
> **I'm taking a brief hiatus from all social media (Tumblr and Twitter) but I expect to continue updating fic, maybe just not as often. I just need to draw a few boundaries for myself in order to maintain some sanity. :)**

_ Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. _

It takes a few minutes for his brain to catch up with his body. 

As he stares listlessly at the cheering hockey players on his flickering plasma screen television, Dr. Benjamin Solo finds himself scrambling, pulling at the shirt sleeve on his left arm so that it bunches up around his bicep.

He’s looking for a mark. The shot he knew he had received less than 24 hours prior. The shot that should have made that entire exercise with Rey about fifty times more bearable than it had been. 

He also glances down at his pulsing knot, red and angrily poking out of his boxer briefs. It should have calmed by now. It hasn’t.

Oh  _ fuck _ .

He hears himself growl, an unbidden sound, and he feels himself go dizzy.

Alpha ruts aren’t on a cycle. After all, they had to adapt to the Omegas’ ability to procreate. So ruts were essentially  _ triggered _ . They aren’t predictable. They don’t come every four weeks, they aren’t always easily managed, even with the best medication. Mostly because many researchers and doctors were Alphas themselves. And, well, Alpha ruts could be fun for the Alphas. 

If you had a willing mate lying around. 

His mind is a mile a minute, and the logical, very doctor part of him is telling to calmly go to his bathroom. Go to his medicine cabinet. Take a pill. 

The “pill” he has in mind is essentially a sedative, since all those Alpha researchers and scientists insist that once the flood of Alpha pheromones begins, it cannot be stopped.

And unfortunately for him, Dr. Ben Solo, who should  _ absolutely fucking know better _ , had just shoved his entire face into the jeans Rey had soaked with her come. Come that was heavy and rich in pheromones and  _ scent _ and everything distinctly primal and intoxicating.

He stumbles off his couch and toward his pristine bathroom. There’s a part of him that’s still in control, of course. The rest of him is a panting, sweaty, horny mess.

He dry swallows the sedative from his medicine cabinet and collapses on the tile floor of his bathroom. 

He begins to crawl towards his shower. With a trembling hand, he reaches up and turns on the spout, allowing ice cold water to wash over him.

And with the sound of the water pouring down around him, Ben does his best to abate the aching, throbbing problem between his legs.

The sedative begins to kick in, easing his pulsing heart and racing thoughts. His hands grip his cock, and he inexpertly thrusts into his fist. It’s not enough, and he ends up on all fours, jerking himself off roughly over and over, his spend covering the shower floor before the flow of water washes it away. 

With each pulse of each climax, her name is on his lips, soft and hoarse. 

Despite the water streaming down around him, the scent of her still seems to coat his sinuses. It’s practically embedded on his olfactory cortex. 

It feels like a blanket of salt and jasmine and campfire smoke smothers his entire face, and he is lost to it. 

He’s not sure how many times he ejaculates onto the shower floor, but he is there until he is shivering, goosebumps covering his arms, and he worries he may have done some severe damage to the plumbing of the high rise condo complex. 

The sedative heavy in his veins, he only just manages to reach up with a trembling hand and turn off the water before he passes out on the cold tile, staring up at the ceiling.

* * *

Rey had taken a risk. It had not been calculated, and she wasn’t even that great at math to begin with.

She stumbles back into her studio apartment, shutting the rickety door behind her, leaning up against the wall of her entryway before she collapses upon it, her head between her knees and her hands gripping her shins as she breathes as evenly as possible. 

She had fucking  _ run _ home from his apartment. 

She realizes she had left her bike there, chained up to a street sign outside his high rise. 

She had run here, adrenaline coursing through her veins and desire licking at her soul. 

Her mind is a boat in stormy weather now. Rains and winds pound at the edges of her conscious, her biology begging her to go back and get  _ fucked _ within an inch of her life. And then there’s her logical, rational mind, the Rey she’s always known:  _ He’s your friend, he was your doctor, what the fuck are you doing, you absolute reptile? _

That reptilian brain of hers hisses, licking its lips and grinning salaciously back at her.  _ You’re going to let him knot you.  _ Yellow eyes blink at her. Like this lizard knows something she doesn’t.

She herself blinks, lifting her head and opening her eyes and looking around her apartment, coming back to reality.

Is she losing her mind?

She peels herself up off the floor and goes to her kitchen counter, counting out her suppressants. 

One week until she goes into her scheduled heat. It had been nearly three months since her first one. Three months since she had met Dr. Solo, the Brooding Hot Doctor. Three months had passed, and the had inexplicably befriended each other. Inexplicably been drawn to each other. 

What she felt with him was the feeling that they had known each other for years. That he had always been, and always would be, a part of her life. Inexplicably. 

How easily the ragged edges of his soul had fit together with the ragged edges of hers. 

How she hadn’t once stopped to really consider the nature of their stations in life ( _ what was this, Pride and Prejudice? _ ) because it hadn’t occurred to her. But he was a surgeon, living in a fancy condo, and she was a temp and a barista and a part-time student living in a grungy studio apartment on the wrong side of town.

But he didn’t care.  _ She _ didn’t care. 

And all of this makes her double over on herself as she stands at her kitchen counter and slumps to the floor once more in sobbing tears. 

Her newfound friendship with her beloved Finn hadn’t made her feel this way. 

Ben had delved into parts of her soul that she hadn’t known existed. 

And her fear, her desperate fear, at the end of the day? That lizard licking its lips at the edge of her subconscious. What if all of this was just that pheromone phenomenon? 

Was any of it real? 

* * *

Rey returns to her usual schedule, Ben excluded. She sneaks back to his high rise in the dead of night, fetching her bike and trying not to glance up at the windows of his apartment, terrified that she may see him standing there, watching her.

She puts in her leave requests at Cruiser Coffee and the temp agency. She calls Takodana, ready to schedule a three to five day stay in its clinic, considering sedating herself once more for this heat.

She’s never felt less ready to be horny in her life. 

Each night, on her back on her futon, she tries to mimic what Ben had done to her. She gets frustrated each time, unable to angle her hand just right. Her fingers aren’t as satisfying (she had already discovered this by herself in the hospital), and she realizes that if this is a useless endeavor when she’s  _ not _ in heat, it will be even more pathetic when she does encounter the rush of arduous, intense desire.

She gets so desperate she orders sex toys off Amazon Prime with two-day shipping. 

She skirts around the issue at her next session with Luke, who just tells her to take advantage of the “resources” at the Takodana clinic. When she leaves his little basement office, she kicks over a potted plant on his terrace out of spite. 

* * *

When the number of pills in her suppressant pill bottle gets dangerously low, she loses all semblance of sanity and impulse control.

“Do you want to do this?” Rey blurts out as soon as he picks up the phone. 

She hears him breathing on the other side. 

“Do this?” he repeats back to her.

“Be my Alpha. Whatever. I still don’t get the exact nuances of how these relationships and interactions work. But I don’t want to get someone off a mating app or website. I want you, Ben.”

When the phone line goes dead, she falls back on her futon and allows tears to pool in her eyes. She must have played her cards very poorly. It was all over. He didn’t want her.

Except that twenty minutes later, she can smell him before she can hear his loud knocking at the door. 

She greets him, her breath catching in her throat and her panic evident. She’s filled with gratitude, but her fear and anxiety haven't assuaged yet. 

“How many days until you –” he begins to ask.

“Two,” her voice catches in her throat.

“I’m on call today,” Ben informs her. “I don’t know how long I can stay. But I had to come over, after that call –”

The dam within her breaks. Tears flow freely, and Rey begins to hyperventilate, unable to hold back any longer.

She hiccups, trying to speak, trying to tell him exactly – “I’m scared, I don’t want to go back to the clinic, I don’t want to be in a hospital again, I’m alone, Ben, I’m so alone –”

He pulls her close. It’s not the embrace of a lover, nor is it the embrace of a friend. But he holds her close to his chest, her nose nestled into the space near his heart, and she realizes that with every inhale of his scent, her panic begins to abate, somehow –

“What’s happening?” she whispers as her breathing evens out, as her heart rate begins to return to the double digits. 

“Studies have shown that Alpha scents can have a particularly calming effect on Omegas,” he murmurs into her hair, his hands at her waist, pressing her close to him. “I’ve never really had an opportunity to test that theory.”

Her tears have left wet marks on the fabric of his shirt. She sniffles. “So you’re like my own personal Xanax?”

He chuckles at that, and she pulls away slightly, his hands drifting down to rest on her hips.

“I almost didn’t treat you in the hospital that evening,” he admits, apropos of nothing. “You threw me off for a moment. But I’m a professional.”

“You’re a professional,” she agrees.

“I never – you never felt like I – I stepped out of line –” he stammers.

Her eyes widen in surprise as she understands what he’s implying. “No! God, no. I was embarrassed for myself, really. You’re a good doctor, Ben. You really are.”

“It was my job to make sure you were okay. I needed to be your doctor.”

His hands on her hips, he begins to back her into her apartment. He kicks the door shut behind him.

“But you’re also a man,” she whispers, bringing her own hands up to rest on his pectorals. 

He’s so fucking big. They could name trees out in those California national parks after him.

“I’m also a man,” he agrees.  _ And an Alpha _ , she thinks. 

He backs her up to her futon, gently laying her down on the cushion as he kneels before her, between her legs.

She sits up slightly and places her palm on his chest, over his rapidly beating heart. 

“Have some faith in yourself,” she tells him. She can smell his worry. His unease. 

He crawls up and over her then, caging her in, his hands on either side of her head. 

His scent is intoxicating like this. She can’t fathom how only moments ago, icy panic had filled her veins. Now it was all warmth. Warmth, familiarity, comfort.

Him.

“And now it’s your job…” her voice trails off, wavering slightly, “it’s your job to not be my doctor. Or my friend, even. If you can do that.” She wets her lips. She wants to say it, she wants to ask him. Almost a proposal, but she’s nervous. 

_ Be my Alpha, Ben. Be my Alpha. _

If only he could read her mind, her thoughts.

He lowers his face, pressing his nose into her collarbone, into her neck, nuzzling her. He’s smelling her. She thinks this should be ticklish, but it’s not. She squirms as she feels arousal, electric and warm, nestle in her abdomen once more.

“It’s going to be different during a heat,” she wonders out loud as he licks at the sensitive skin of her jugular. “That’s what I’m scared of. Without all the drugs in the hospital.”

He pulls away slightly. “Very different,” he agrees with her.

“So what are we doing now, because I’ve never –” she stammers slightly. “I’ve never done anything – except for with you, the other –”

“And it’s been a while for me,” he admits. 

They stare at each other for a few moments, taking in the sight of each other. The physical proximity of both their bodies and their scents is truly dizzying. She’s glad she’s lying down.

He runs a hand up both her thighs, gripping them, his massive hands almost encircling the width of her.

“We can just practice, I suppose,” she whispers, her voice catching at the sensation of his hands upon her bare skin. The memory of his fingers inside of her. She feels the muscles in her legs clench, her throat getting thick with desire. 

His hands drift up to begin lifting her shirt.

It’s at that very opportune moment that his pager goes off. 

“Fuck,” he swears, fumbling with the phone in his back pocket. 

“Well, that was the idea,” she snarks at him, watching as he pulls his phone from his back pocket and stares at the screen. 

“I have to go into the hospital.”

She whines. 

“I’ll put in a leave request, after this,” he informs her as he gets up and begins to depart. She shuts her thighs and sits up on her futon, letting out a groan of frustration.

She watches longingly as he leaves, his focus intent on his phone as he types a message back. 

He glances back at her before he closes the door. “You won’t be alone, Rey,” he reassures her. “Not this time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If any of you are like me and tend to have bad mental health days where getting out of bed feels like an Olympic sport, I recommend [this website.](http://youfeellikeshit.com/) Thought it couldn't hurt to throw in here.


	8. Fixation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Whatever you want from this,” he motions in the space between their chests, “you can have.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **This chapter is dedicated to[blessmycircuits](https://twitter.com/blessmycircuits)** :) Thank you so much for your support. xx
> 
> Thank you so so much to my fave cheerleaders/betas: [oscillateswildly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oscillateswildly/profile), [afalsebravado](https://twitter.com/afalsebravado), and [t0bemadeofglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/t0bemadeofglass/works). <3
> 
> And THANK YOU to all you lovely readers and commenters for all your support. It's been a tough week. My therapist supports me indulging in "creative writing" but we don't have to tell her the precise nature of what I'm writing, right? RIGHT?

Ben Solo finds a sense of calm and clarity when he is able to practice surgery.

He finds tranquility in the chaos of trauma surgery, and he’s always felt like he never understood it.

But now, looking back, when he considers the way he grew up, it starts to make a lot of sense. 

His parents had always been at each other’s throats. Han Solo and Leia Organa had fallen in love passionately, and they fought with that same passion. While they never directed any of their aggression towards Ben, he grew up surrounded by the familiar sounds of screaming and yelling, of glass shattering and ceramic breaking against the wall. He became accustomed to chaos and uncertainty at a young age.

And when his parents had divorced, well, Ben had learned to adapt. He was shipped back and forth across the country in an absolutely preposterous joint custody agreement. That was, of course, until Han’s past had caught up to him. Then the visits to his father had ended abruptly. Leia, busy with work, dropped Ben off with his uncle Luke, who kept trying to psychoanalyze his fifteen-year-old nephew.

But surgery. There is something so violent, yet methodical about surgery. Ben could have a patient on his table at the brink of death, and bring them back with a strategic slice of a scalpel here, a suture there. It was violent, but it could be poetic. There was a method to the violence, a structure.  There was grace in the chaos. 

It’s what had drawn him to trauma surgery in the years after medical school. 

He almost loses track of time in the operating room. At the back of his mind, he knows Rey is out there, waiting for him. But he has to compartmentalize and focus. A young man is on his table, the victim of a hit and run. Stay in the present, one step at a time.

And after his shift has ended, he makes a beeline for the hospital pharmacy. He’s in need of reinforcements for the days ahead.

* * *

Rey doesn’t hear from him for nearly twenty-four hours.

She scurries around her apartment, cleaning compulsively. In fact, her apartment has been pristine lately. Normal friends might be concerned about this. Yet Ben seemed to have a knack at being his own kind of control freak. 

Speaking of Ben: she knows he’s probably in surgery. He’s doing whatever he needs to be doing. She might as well make herself busy as well.

Unfortunately for her, she’s already on leave from both her jobs. She’s finished her homework for her marketing class. So Rey ends up baking two batches of muffins, freezing half of them and collecting the other dozen in a Tupperware to eat over the next few days. She realizes she had lost track of baking as a hobby. She blames the whole Omega thing and her new work schedule. 

When she checks the clock and realizes it’s still afternoon, she bikes to the library and picks a computer terminal in a secluded area. She’s not sure she wants any prying eyes on her Google searches.

After only a moment of hesitation, she types “biting” and “Omegas” into the search engine, eager to quell her curiosity. She knows what she’s about. She only wishes she had done this sooner, but she was still without a laptop at home and felt weird looking it up at work or asking anyone else about it. 

> **Wikipedia**
> 
> Alpha/Omega Dynamics > Mating Practices > Bites
> 
> _ Until the eighteenth century, mating bites were considered common practice for mated Alphas and Omegas. During the Age of Enlightenment, however, this practice soon became considered quite taboo and antiquated.  _
> 
> _ Biologically, the exact purpose of mating bites are not precisely understood. Scientists and researchers at the University of Chandrila recently discovered that there is a transfer of pheromones during the exchange. Historically, an Alpha and Omega who exchange a mating bite are considered mated for life, their scents permanently traded. _
> 
> _ During the Victorian era, biting was outlawed, and Omegas with visible bite marks were corralled in asylums, and their Alpha mates put on trial for lewd behavior. _
> 
> _ Now, there are certain subsets of the adult video industry that partake in this practice (primarily faked), but it is still considered very old-fashioned and a strange practice by the vast majority of the populace.  _

Rey understands why Finn may have found her question a bit odd, now. Especially if people considered it a “kinky” thing. Akin to whips and leather, maybe. She’s not even sure where she had first heard about it.

“What are you Googling?!” barks a shrill voice from behind her. Rey stiffens and turns in her seat to find a librarian glaring down at her. Rey quickly clicks out of Wikipedia and flushes.

“It’s – nothing. For school.”

“I’m certain no school would have you searching something like  _ that _ . I can see all of the screens from the main terminal, young lady. You should leave.”

Rey doesn’t make eye contact with the woman, who’s likely only doing her job, and tiptoes out of the library with her head down.

At the end of the day, Rey has faith that Ben won’t leave her in a bad predicament. Still, her “toys” lie wrapped in their Amazon Prime boxes by the door.

She’s nervous. Especially after the library incident. Without him or his scent present, she’s left pacing around her studio. She wrings her hands as she sits at one end of the apartment and eyeballs her phone sitting on the counter twelve feet away.

The next night, the night before she’s scheduled to begin her heat, he finally, thankfully, calls her.

“Do you want to come over to mine?” he asks her as soon as she answers the phone. His voice is tired.

“Are you sure about this? You sound exhausted,” she fidgets with her phone. 

“Rey. Stop. I’m sure. Your place or mine?”

She sighs and waffles a bit. Her apartment would be nice, familiar. Homey. But his place is gorgeous, luxe, and gets way better delivery options on Postmates. Not that they’d be eating much. But having the option was nice. It’s the principle of the matter.

“It’d be nice to be at yours,” she decides. The pragmatist in her knows there might be a bit of a mess involved in this endeavor. She remembers how many times the nurses at the hospital and the clinic had to change her sheets last time. He has laundry in-unit. She does not.

He calls her a town car so that she rolls up to his apartment at nearly thirty minutes to midnight, a bag packed with clothes and her muffins in a Tupperware and a toothbrush and whatever else she could think of for what she assumes will be a three-day sex marathon. (The sex toys are left packaged and unopened back at her apartment. Where they hopefully belong.)

When she does get up to his condo, he chuckles as she drops her duffel bag on the floor. 

“You won’t be needing any of that,” he tells her.

They hover awkwardly around his kitchen island for a moment. 

“So,” she says, clicking her tongue. 

“I can smell it on you,” he blurts out. She blushes immediately. He tries to backtrack. “I’m sorry – it’s just – you almost smell like that first night I saw you, I can just tell you’re close, that’s all –”

Rey chooses to ignore his bumbling and goes to the fridge to fetch a Perrier. She keeps checking the clock as if her heat will begin at the stroke of midnight.

It doesn’t.

He’s too sleepy to talk or interact much. He seems tense, like there’s something he's holding back, but she knows he just got off a surgery. She remembers the last time that had happened, the whole pub brawl. Rey wonders if his colleague, Hux, ever made good on his promise regarding Human Resources. Now doesn’t seem like the right time to ask.

They curl up on the couch together and he turns on cooking show reruns. Her eyes drift to two VHS tapes on the bottom shelf of his coffee table. “ _ What to Expect During Your First Heat”  _ is the title on one, designed in shitty nineties-era fonts and colors. She’s not sure if she wants to laugh or punch him, because he definitely didn’t have these tapes before. Were they meant for her or for  _ him _ ?

Since it’s late, she ignores the tapes. Something to tease him about later. Maybe they could even watch them and have some fun.

His body is warm and comforting, but there’s still something nagging at her. Her inexperience, for one. They were supposed to  _ practice _ the other night. Before he got called away to the hospital.

At one point, she finally finds courage and shifts in her seat, beginning to ask him: “Should we start up where we left off, the other night?”

But she notices he’s already asleep, head tilted over the back of the couch. So much for ‘practice.’ Guess this next heat is going to be a bit of a baptism by fire.

She eventually falls asleep as well, her head in his lap, his arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders. After all the late night hockey games, it's a familiar position for them both. 

* * *

They are both awoken the next morning with her heat acting like some sort of “come fuck me” alarm. Her arousal is what startles her awake. Her throat feels dry and the lower half of her body feels like it’s been dipped in a warm bath.

How long ago did her heat begin? This felt like a slower onset than the last one. Her first one had felt she was hit by a train. This felt a bit more gradual, like an overnight pussy preparedness method.

She’s still in her fucking sweatpants, but at least had the wherewithal to shower the night before. She glances down, noticing that the grey fabric of her pants has soaked through at the apex of her thighs. For some reason, for a brief moment, she finds herself wondering if she’s sexy or desirable enough to go through with all this. Will Ben even want her? 

Her skin feels a bit itchy and sweaty, clammy, covered in a light sheen of sweat. It’s not even nine a.m. 

She’s so distracted by the slowly changing state of her body that she doesn’t process that Ben is stirring as well. 

He pulls her up and into his lap with a borderline  _ feral _ growl. 

She thought this would be easy, straightforward. She thought she could go into heat, he’d fuck her through it, and that’s that. But no, there’s something that’s bothering her about all this. 

And so despite her itchy, desperate arousal, she finds herself clawing at his chest in some form of protest.

“No, I don’t want it to be like this,” she whimpers, tears pooling in her eyes. “Not our first time. We should have practiced, last night.”

She realizes that she probably sounds a bit bonkers, calling him the other day begging him to fuck her through her heat – and now this. But it’s not just  _ their _ first time. It will be  _ her _ first time. 

“Like what?” he asks, his voice a bit muffled and groggy, having just woken up. His lips find her throat, his hands travel up to grip the back of her neck.

“In heat. I feel like I can’t think straight,” she whimpers, leaning into his touch, her movements in direct opposition to what she’s saying. “What if I don’t remember any of it?”

He blinks his eyes open, shaking the sleep away and stretching his neck out.

“You’ll remember all of it.” His touch becomes gentler. “But Rey, that’s how it’s always going to be. Every time you’re in heat.” He soothes a hand over her back, pulling her close to him, their chests pressing together.

“Well, I don’t like it,” she murmurs. She slips her hands into his hair, letting her eyes flutter shut so that she can feel the way his soft curls fit between her fingers.

“You don’t like what?”

“Losing control,” she responds, rubbing her clothed sex into his groin. She’s thrilled to notice that she’s having an effect on him. She can feel his bulge through his pajama pants.

“Are you sure about that?” he tries to joke.

Her eyes open to meet his gaze. She frowns, letting out a small, helpless, annoyed sound. Partially from the predicament of her inexperience, partially because she’s just getting damn horny.

He gets serious again and pulls her away from him a bit. 

“Rey, you’re okay. What you’re afraid of – some uncontrollable Omega heat that makes you want things you don’t want? That’s just a fear. It’s not how this works.” 

She blinks, eyes wet and cheeks flushed and her core aching with an unparalleled desire to be fucked over his glass Restoration Hardware coffee table until it breaks. 

He shifts away from her. She doesn’t know how to respond. 

“You aren’t feral, Rey, despite what the media and porn industry might have you believe. You aren’t a puppet, completely helpless to the whims of an Alpha.”

She shakes her head again and begins to pick at her cuticles. “But when you told me what to do, back in the ER that night – and every time you’ve told me to do something since – it felt  _ good,  _ like I had to, like I had lost control or something –”

“As an Omega, heeding the request of an Alpha will illicit a pleasure response, yes, but it’s always up to you,” he tucks a tendril of hair behind her ear. “It’s only you, Rey, and only you have a say in what you want.”

Her chest fills with something indescribable. Tears brim over, and she chokes out a sigh of relief. 

“Whatever you want from this,” he motions in the space between their chests, “you can have.”

She settles herself with a deep breath. She blinks slowly. 

So what has she always wanted? She, who’s never given any other human being any sexual interest? How does she navigate this particular maze?

“Okay,” she says quietly, “okay then.” 

Ben’s eyes are wide as he regards her. 

“This stays here?” she whispers. She’s not even sure what she means. She just knows she wants whatever this is, whatever her Omega lizard brain wants, she wants it to stay here, in the safety of the cocoon she’s built with him over the last few months.

“This stays here,” he reassures her. His hands are firm on her waist.

“Okay.”

“So then, what do you like?” He nibbles on her earlobe.

She squeaks slightly. “I don’t – I don’t know,” she confesses. He should know that already.

His hands drift up and down her back. He presses light kisses to her collarbone.

“Say I’m good,” she whispers suddenly, so softly she’s not sure if he heard her. Ben pulls back and tilts his head. “Tell me what to do. That’s what I like,” she blurts, reddening. She hates it. She hates admitting it. She hates how good it’s felt every time she follows a request of his. She feels herself flush again.

She grabs him by the back of the neck, pulls him close. “ _Tell me_ ,” she orders him. 

He hesitates. She lifts one of his hands to the back of her neck, where it had been before. She moves it up into her hair, scrunching and squeezing, indicating that he should  _ pull _ .

She lets go, and he seems to understand the implication. Still nestled in his lap, he pulls her head back by her hair, baring her throat to him. He licks up the length of her neck, tasting her. 

“Ben,” she groans as she feels a new, fresh pulse of slick and heat. It’s getting more intense. “Come on.” 

Why drag this out?

He moves his grip to cup the curves of her ass, and lifts, keeping her balanced on his hips as she hooks her feet at the small of his back. 

He carries her to his bedroom, and she rests her head on his shoulder, breathing in as much of him as possible.

Where there had been unease, uncertainty, there was now just the reassuring knowledge of  _ Alpha, Alpha, Alpha. _

Her lizard brain is  _ very pleased _ .

She wonders what it’s like for him. To carry her like this. What does her scent do for him? What does it feel like for him?

He gently places her at the foot of his platform bed. Her legs hang off over the edge, her feet just barely grazing the hardwood floor. 

“Lie back,” he tells her. 

She falls backward, her eyes fluttering closed as endorphins rush through her body. 

He crawls up and over her, undressing her without much overture. He throws her sweatpants and shirt and undies in the corner of the room, where she hopes they remain for the next 72 hours. Maybe that’s what he meant when he had said she wouldn’t need anything from her duffel bag.

He gets down on the floor between her legs and spreads her thighs wide apart. He admires her. She’s not sure precisely what she looks like down there, but she’s sure it’s messy. She hasn’t been back to the salon in a hot minute, so there’s a layer of soft curls covering her pubis. She also knows that she’s wet and sticky. She can feel moisture all along her thighs.

He’s taking his time, resting his gaze on her slick pussy and she’s getting antsy. Her heat isn’t in full force  _ quite _ yet, but like, she would seriously benefit from getting fucked right now.

“You’ve never seen an Omega in heat?” she chides him as he continues to take his time.

“It’s not that. I’ll be honest with you,” he leans forward to bite at her inner thigh, glistening with her arousal. “I’ve never been with a female Omega before.”

She hesitates, knowing now isn’t the best time to bring up his past trysts with the man she’s so sure now is Poe Dameron. She’s just been so nervous to poke around and get answers or confirmation, especially after her last snafu asking Finn about the biting thing. And she can’t really  _ Google _ this guy’s relationship history, can she?

It’s very easy for her to forget about any of his past lover(s?) and his dark backstory when his mouth finds its way to her slick pussy.

He takes a moment, his tongue hovering along her soft folds before delving deeper. It feels incredible, and he seems to be intent on tasting her. 

When he lifts his head back up, his pupils have blown wide and he’s flushed in what must be the beginnings of a rut. A rut and a heat, like peanut butter and jelly. The way nature intended.

She can’t hold back a grin. This is what she wanted. She, a mere Omega, bringing this Alpha to the edge of his sanity. 

He moves so quickly as he undresses she’s not sure when and how it happens. One moment he’s kneeling on the floor between her spread legs, his lips slick with her, and the next he’s gloriously naked.

“Ben,” she writhes, getting impatient as she feels herself slicken. She can  _ feel _ the moisture pooling in the folds of her cunt. “Ben.”

“Okay, it’s okay, I’ve got you,” he regards her, running his hands up along her calves, to her knees. “Are you ready?”

“Yes, oh god, just do it –” she pleads as she scoots back, making room for him. 

He crawls up onto the bed and settles on his knees between her outstretched legs. He hooks his hands around her thighs, grabbing onto the firm flesh of her glutes as he pulls her up and onto him. His muscles strain, likely from holding himself back. 

“Relax, Omega,” he tells her, and she exhales, letting her body go as limp as it possibly could. She glances up at his defined pectoral muscles, down to his iliac furrow, at his erect dick and  _ how the fuck is he going to fit that in there? _

He answers her unspoken question by hilting his cock into her in one incredibly fluid, incredibly satisfying motion. 

“Oh,” she gasps out. It doesn’t hurt at all, not that that had been the first thing on her mind. 

He looks down at her. “That alright?” His forearms quiver where they grip her at her hips.

“It’s more than alright. Just - don’t move for a second.” She feels her chest heave. She wants to relish the feeling. After a moment, she remarks: “I thought this was supposed to hurt.”

“Well,” he sounds strained, like holding back is an incredible amount of effort for him, “you’re in heat. So it’s very unlikely that it would. But even when you aren’t, it should never hurt. That’s a myth. Should never hurt your first time.”

She feels like she’s simultaneously never been this sane nor been this desperate. It’s a bizarre dichotomy. The knowledge that he’s an Alpha, here to take care of her, knot her, do what he likes with her, and she’s here at his mercy and 

_ won’t  _

_ he  _

_ just  _

_ fucking  _

**_fuck_ **

_ her  _

_ already? _

“Okay, you need to do your thing now,” she whines, the surprise of it all having passed. Her heat is starting to get more intense. The fact that he’s inside her is definitely abating some of that, but still.

He begins to move her, his hands on her hips directing her body where he wants her.

“Is this what you want, Omega?” he asks, his voice having gone deep, almost raspy. They’re both beginning to let go, slowly but surely, giving in to those primal instincts. 

She feels impaled on him. She doesn’t even have time to process that  _ oh my god; she’s doing it, she’s having sex, the first time is in heat and it’s happening, oh my god. _

“Yes, yes, yes,” she manages to answer him, her head lolling slightly, her muscles somehow completely relaxed as he pounds into her, scooting them both farther up the bed in the process. 

His hands travel all over her body, holding her, gripping her, positioning her. Rey feels as if she can feel every ridge of his calloused fingers, every wrinkle in his palms.

She’s just riding it out. The sensation of his massive Alpha dick dragging along her sensitive, velvety wet inner walls is what she might describe as a religious experience. 

He begins to get frantic and rough. His hands grip her hips, pulling her onto him as he looms over her and thrusts. His scent is the most overpowering it’s ever been, and she wonders if this is what it feels like when people get high on drugs. But this is probably better. 

So sex. Mating. This is what all the hullabaloo was about. This is what Alphas had killed for over the centuries. This is –

She wants to be closer to him. It’s not enough.

“Closer, closer,” she gasps out, and he understands. He leans back, pulls her up and into his lap. She hooks her feet at his back, pulling herself as close as she can, pressing their chests together, basking in the sensation of naked skin against naked skin.

“Do you want me – want me to –”

“ _ Tell me,”  _ she reminds him.

“Good, oh god, good Omega, I’m going to – can I – let me knot you – please –”

She glances down, noticing the bulging red ring of flesh at the base of his cock which has grown exponentially in size. 

She’s sure that in any other situation it might look terrifying, but for now, her mouth salivates. 

“Please, please,” she manages to gasp out, nodding.

His breathing has gone ragged and shaky. “Okay, okay, relax for me, this might feel like a lot for a moment,” he tells her. 

His hands settle on her waist and he pulls her down as he stuffs his knot inside her wet cunt. 

“ _ Take it _ ,” he growls, mouthing at her neck hungrily. His tongue travels along her skin, tasting every part of her. 

“Fuck,” she yelps out, her nails clawing at his chest. 

It’s not a bad feeling. It’s quite the opposite. It’s  _ exactly what she fucking needs, good fucking riddance.  _

She hadn’t felt impaled before. This was being impaled. This was being stuffed and stretched so wide and filled so truly and completely she felt like she might go cross-eyed from the satisfaction. It’s a bizarrely new sensation, one her fingers nor any toy has ever been able to achieve. It’s just what her body needs. 

“Rey,” he moans, jerking slightly. “You’re good, so good for me, you’re doing so well –”

She feels pleasure at this coil deep within her.  _ You’re good, you’re being so good for your Alpha _ . His knot hits  _ that spot _ within her, and her climax is intense and takes all motor function out of her limbs.

She feels his knot begin to pulse within her, drawing her orgasm out deliciously. She literally sighs with the relief of it.

Still inside her, he rearranges them both so that he’s leaning back against his headboard and she’s still straddling his lap. 

“So now we stay like this,” he tells her breathlessly.

“You know that feeling on a really hot day when you finally get an ice water or a popsicle?” she asks him, sighing contentedly. 

He hums in acknowledgment. “I do.”

“This is so much fucking better than that,” she says. “I feel like I can think straight again.”

He nods at her, his chest still heaving slightly. “Yes.”

“So was that a rut?” she wonders out loud. 

He glances down at his forearm, where there’s a faint injection mark, before meeting her eyes. “A more mild one, yes.”

“And I did that to you?” Pride swells in her chest. 

He nods, pulling her closer and playing with her hair as he holds her. She doesn’t even mention the mark, where he must have taken a suppressant. The fact that she pushed him over the edge, even with suppressants in his system, fills her with bizarre glee. She refrains from voicing any of this, of course.

And so the cycle of her heat begins. 

* * *

They get about forty-five minutes of slight peace and sanity after each time he knots her. Her hormones and pheromones seem to even out for about thirty minutes, allowing her to run to the bathroom uninterrupted, grab a snack, and tidy up before they begin again.

And then, towards the end of that approximately 30-minute long refractory period, she’s itchy and hot and dying to be impaled on his girthy dick.

At one point, during one of these breaks, they curl up on his bed (which has been absolutely destroyed by fluids and the general mess that accompanies fucking).

“Tell me about glands,  _ doctor _ ,” she asks him with a smile. “I’ve never understood them.”

“Well, years ago, we know that Omegas had scent glands here,” he nuzzles under her jaw. “And here,” he lifts her hand and presses a kiss to the inside of her wrist. 

“I suppose with evolution, we didn’t need them anymore?” 

He leans back, between her thighs, sitting upright. He then pulls her close, aggressively, so that her hips are balanced on his lap, her naked groin once more dangerously close to his dick.

“I suppose there’s a lot we don’t know,” he tells her.

“And what’s this one for, then?” she asks as she lifts her hair up, turning her neck to the side, baring the gland there to him.

He worries at his bottom lip, his eyes hungry. He brings his huge hands down to her waist and flips her around and over, onto her hands and knees.

He pulls her back into his lap slightly, so that her legs fall on either side of his hips and her face is pressed into the duvet.

And then he does something she’s honestly only thought happened in porn. He leans over her, possessively, kissing his way up her spine, before  _ licking _ her gland, surrounding it with his lips and  _ sucking _ .

“We can have a lot of fun with this one,” he murmurs against it.

She squirms beneath him, humping her hips  _ down _ , trying to get friction where she now so desperately needs it.

“Fuck,” she spits out, almost involuntarily, her eyes practically rolling back in her head.

The back of her neck is a sensitive place as is. But she’s never had anyone touch it like this before. Let alone  _ lick  _ it.

Rey wishes his teeth would bite down, down on that gland,  _ bite – bite – _

She manages to stop herself, remembering her Google search. Remembering the way Finn had reacted when she had brought that up weeks prior. She still felt embarrassment at crossing a social boundary she hadn’t known even existed. 

Ben takes her from behind this time, knotting her as she trembles on her hands and knees. His hips hit her ass roughly with each thrust. His hand grips her hair, pulling her head back. 

“You take it so well, Omega, you’re incredible, just for me,” he whispers, warm against her ear. 

His mouth on her gland sends her into climax after blinding climax. She ends up whispering an unbidden series of “ _ thank you, thank you _ ” as he pulses his hot spend into her cunt.

* * *

She’s not sure if its because he’s a surgeon and likes working with his hands, but he enjoys foreplay. Particularly using his large, dexterous fingers on her whenever he can.

He curls his fingers deep within her, coaxing even more and more moisture out of her with obscene wet sounds. They’ve already gone through two sets of sheets. Towels lay crumpled up by the bed.

“God, Rey, I love this,” he tells her reverently. “You’re so wet for me. You have the most perfect cunt, I swear.”

She manages to gasp out, “You’re a terrible teacher, by the way,” as she bucks her hips into his hand.

He stops moving, leaving his fingers within her. “Excuse me?”

“You did all that the other week,” she points down at his hand between her legs as she tries to find her breathing, “but didn’t really show me how to do it myself.”

“Oh, so you’re giving constructive criticism now?” He tilts his head, unable to stop a small smile from forming. 

She nods up at him. “Terrible, terrible job you did.”

She must have hurt his ego or something, but to her benefit. He begins his ministrations on her aching cunt anew, rendering her completely speechless and at his mercy. He wrings two orgasms out of her like this before she’s literally  _ begging _ for his knot. 

He gladly obliges her.

* * *

Maybe he has an oral fixation as well.

She whines a bit. “Come on, let’s get back to it,” she urges him, as she rides his face and tries to fuck herself down onto this very large tongue. It’s nice. It’s just not enough.

“Hey,” he says, his voice muffled between her thighs. “We have nearly two more days of this. We don’t have to rush.”

She shoves herself further down, effectively smothering his mouth with her wet, swollen skin of her pussy. 

“Speak for yourself,” she snarls, rubbing her clit into his nose. “I’m constantly in heat. You’ve only gone into like, two ruts this whole time.”

Part of her is now almost  _ frustrated  _ that he took those suppressants. 

Still, his eyes twinkle below her, and she reckons he’s enjoying this. Enjoying keeping her on edge. 

“Not fair,” she pulls herself up and off him, moving down to straddle his torso so that she can press her lips to his. 

She tastes herself, heavy on his lips and tongue. It’s almost decadent, and she feels depraved for doing so.

It’s only after a moment that she realizes it’s the first time they’ve properly kissed. If he notices this new development, he doesn’t mention it.

* * *

It’s mid-morning on the second day. She’s just come once on his mouth and twice on his knot.

They have another few minutes to relax before it begins anew.

“Why didn’t you end up specializing in a Omega health, like you had planned?” Rey asks.

“This is your idea of pillow talk?”

“It’s just talk. We don’t talk much about anything, really, do we? Other than hockey.”

He grunts, rolling onto his back.

“I told you. I got an offer from a really prolific surgeon.”

“Snoke.”

“Yes, him.”

“But you don’t work for him anymore.”

Ben turns his head away. She’s come to realize that there is something here, related to his father. She noticed the connection the last time she had brought it up. 

When he doesn’t answer, she decides to poke the bear. “It has something to do with your father, doesn’t it?”

He jerks his head black to look at her. His eyes are glassy. 

“Ben –”

He interrupts her. “My parents separated when I was in high school,” he tells her. “I didn’t see much of my father – or mother – after that. Not that I saw much of them to begin with.”

He swallows before continuing. She scoots closer to him on the bed, hooking a foot around his calf. 

“One night, we had a trauma come in. Snoke was the attending. I was the only fellow on call that night.”

Ben inhales sharply. “It was my dad. I didn’t even know he was back in town. And – and I shouldn’t have been called in. They knew. Snoke knew. It was – it all happened so quickly. Snoke should have never –” 

She lays a hand on his arm. He twitches slightly as if he might pull away, but doesn’t.

“I’ve played it over and over in my head. Did I hit the artery on purpose?” He chokes up slightly. “I don’t – I just –”

“Ben, shh – it’s okay –” she crawls up over and on him, hoping she can fix this with her Omega wiles. "We don't have to talk – let's just –"

It does the trick. Five minutes later he’s panting beneath her, sheathed deep inside of her. His eyes still glisten slightly.

It’s a temporary fix, though, and Rey is determined to discuss this issue with him at a later date.

* * *

Thanks to all the endorphins bouncing around in both their bodies, they return to their regularly scheduled programming fairly quickly.

“There’s something I’ve wanted to try,” he whispers as he nuzzles into her neck from behind. “From a scientific perspective. Would you indulge me?”

She groans, knowing she’d probably do handstands and somersaults for him at this point if he’d asked. She was so fucking blissed out. 

“Frankly,” Rey tells him, turning around to face him, “you can do whatever you like with me.”

“Hm,” he hums, arranging her on her back and spreading her legs with his ginormous fucking hands. His incredibly skilled hands.

“You could bend me over a dumpster and raw me behind a Denny’s and have your way with me if you’d like,” she informs him.

“You don’t mind getting a little wet?” he asks suddenly, lifting his head up.

She narrows her eyes at him, and then cranes her neck to look about the bedroom. The floor is covered with towels and sheets that smell obscenely of sex. They’re way past getting ‘a little wet.’

“Ben, come on,” she rolls her eyes. 

Rey is in fact so wet that he easily slips three of his fingers into her cunt with very little preamble. She bears down on him, gasping as her hands fist in the comforter beneath her. 

“By the way,” he curls his fingers upwards, finding that fucking spot again and beginning to rock his hand against it, “I would much prefer it be a Taco Bell.”

She moans in response. 

He analyzes her for a moment, his movements stilling. 

“Get on your hands and knees,” he tells her, and she does so, her body going warm and soft and malleable as she heeds his request. It’s reminiscent of the position he had directed her into back in the emergency room.

His fingers slip into her once more, curling down to stroke deep within her, and then shallower to rock against her g-spot. 

She groans into a pillow. In any other situation, her neck and muscles might be sore from holding this position. In heat, and with her dopamine receptors on fire from being in the presence of an Alpha, she feels no discomfort. Only pleasure. Only heat. Only satisfaction.

“I’ve never personally seen a female Omega ejaculate during a heat, you see,” he informs her, his hand increasing its tempo as she writhes slightly. She’s boneless and speechless. She’s desperate for his knot, but she’s curious to see where this goes.

After all, whatever she wants from this, she can have.

“Ben,” she moans, climbing that precipice once again. “Ben, come on – I’m in fucking heat, please –”

“The stimulation of the g-spot by the Alpha’s knot can, of course, cause ejaculation,” he continues speaking conversationally, “or what some call squirting. But I wonder what it’s like when manually stimulated during a heat.”

Rey can only speak for herself, and it is the relentless effervescent feeling building up within her very joints. 

When she does climax, it’s a geyser, spouting forth and coating her upper thighs with moisture. She thinks she can  _ feel _ him staring at her in awe. 

Whatever. It’s his laundry at the end of the day.

“We should have done this in the bathtub,” he remarks.

She feels the way she did after the sex toy bit in the hospital. Slightly satiated but still with an itch left to scratch.

He seems to sense her dissatisfaction. Ben pushes her down onto her stomach, which she’s thankful for, and laps at the droplets of moisture on the sensitive flesh of her upper thighs.

After a few moments, still on her stomach and feeling like she may never stand again, she feels him spreading her legs slightly as he enters her from behind. 

He hovers over her, not allowing his body weight to smother her (like a gentleman), as he thrusts in and out of her prone body. She mumbles curse words at the sensation. With her legs close together like this, on her stomach, he feels way larger than normal. 

“Oh fuck, you’re so tight like this,” he breathes above her, taking his time as he quite literally dicks her right down into the mattress. 

She’s too blissed out, she just lays there and takes it. He seems to be thoroughly enjoying himself. She climaxes twice. She feels like she could fall asleep like this.

His energy is endless, it appears. She’s not sure if it’s a rut or just a perk of being an Alpha. Lots of adrenaline at the ready in order to keep an Omega sated and quiet and happy.

When he does finally knot her, he rolls them over onto their sides, spooning her and holding her close against his chest. He pulses into her, filling her with his come as he draws patterns along her arms with his fingers.

* * *

Ben Solo hasn’t fucked like this since undergrad.

And this is a completely different experience, in more ways than one.

It’s one thing to learn in medical school the general gist of what’s going on with Omega anatomy. 

It’s another thing to watch her, the woman he – the woman he cares about, his friend, watch her relax and be put at ease by his ministrations.

She’s so soft, she’s soft and wet and tight and he can't get enough of her. Every part of his skin aches to touch every part of hers. He’s curious and takes mental notes.

If he licks her there, her toes curl.

If he sucks here, she whimpers. 

And on and on.

He deserves a degree in cartography from the way he maps out every stimulus and response on her body.

After all, he’s a clinician. He’s methodical in all things.

And by god, what he can’t get over, what he never wants to stop worshipping, is this perfect pussy.

Her pink, puffy pussy. Wet and warm and tight and inviting and always ready for him. 

He marvels at it. 

He gets down between her thighs and just stares for a while after she comes down from another orgasm. He stares, watching the slick drip out of her. Watching the flesh swell slightly.

He’ll run a finger along her folds, gently, and she’ll twitch from the sensitivity. And then it begins again. 

He isn’t sure how many times he knots her, but he’s sure thankful he knows that the birth control implant is in her upper arm. He put it there himself. It means he can hold her close as he slips his knot inside, pulsing within her for minutes on end. 

At one point, she falls asleep on top of him. She nestles into the space between his chin and his shoulder, curled up over him, his cock still deep within her hot cunt, and she flat out begins to snore slightly.

And Ben is way too smitten to do anything but allow it to happen, and long after he’s gone soft he still remains within her for some reason, and he too falls asleep. 

A few hours later, when they wake up, her heat has ended. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I'M SORRY FOR HAVING ANOTHER GRUMPY LIBRARIAN IN THIS CHAPTER I ACTUALLY LOVE LIBRARIANS I SWEAR
> 
> \- I thought a lot about how that scene with Ben talking about his dad would go, and if it would even be appropriate for them to continue their heat, but like, these are two people who are still working on their shitty communication skills and he definitely seems like the kind of guy who might use sex to "forget." It's not meant to be disrespectful for the moment, it's just a reflection of how these two seem to lack some emotional intelligence. Just like our source material ;) (plus like, I myself have had literal experience where a really heavy conversation turned into sex so like... this felt like a very human/relatable thing to do but I just wanted to note and reflect on that for a second)
> 
> \- I am seeing all your comments and everything and I am so OVERWHELMED and happy thank you so much, I'm working on responding it's just been a tough week and I've really been taking a lot of time away from social media. Writing is really the only thing I'm actively doing right now, but I will return and be more active soon. I've just been focusing on getting better out here in the real world! :) But you have no idea how uplifting your feedback has been. It keeps me chugging along, so thank you. 
> 
> \- Why do I write so much porn when I'm in a bad place mentally, you ask? Well. Because it's fun and takes me out of reality for a second, to a place where I have total agency and control, to a place where I can explore the emotions and motivations of two fictional characters I really like. Hehe
> 
> \- I don't know what else to say except I hope this chapter delivered and you can bet your bottom dollar there will be more wild fuckfests in the future because this was just way too much fun


	9. IDGAF

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to [Mixy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afalsebravado/pseuds/afalsebravado) and [Becca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oscillateswildly/profile) as usual!
> 
> Apologies for the delay on this one. Life has been absolutely nutter butter.

A week after her heat, Rey is called into Holdo’s office at the temp agency. On her way in, she runs into Finn in the lobby.

“Hey! Haven’t seen you in a moment,” he admonishes her. 

“Yeah, I had my uh – my, you know. Had to lay low.” 

Finn tilts his head. “Did you go to the clinic?”

She worries at her bottom lip. “No.”

Before Finn can interrogate her, it’s at that moment Poe and Holdo exit her office.

“...really glad we could recruit another partnership on that front. They’ll be so excited,” Poe is saying.

Holdo gives Poe’s shoulder a squeeze as he turns to greet Finn. 

“We’re signing a new contract!” Poe exclaims before he notices Rey. 

As soon as he turns to face Rey and gets closer to her, Poe’s nose wrinkles. 

He practically  _ pounces _ into Rey’s space, looming over her and sniffing her hair. Even she knows this is  _ incredibly _ inappropriate behavior for the modern workplace.

“You – you –” He stammers, grabbing her wrist and inhaling. 

“Dameron!” Holdo’s voice rings out through the office. “Unhand her.” 

Poe practically tucks his tail between his legs and backs away from Rey. He’s unable to hide the scowl that’s formed on his face.

“ _ Him?” _ Poe snaps at her. “Why do you smell like  _ him _ ?”

Holdo and Finn look as confused as ever. 

It’s only Rey who has the final confirmation and finally puts two and two together. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” Rey replies lamely, unsure of how to even begin this conversation. What? She’s supposed to explain how she was just fucked six ways to Sunday by her former doctor, who also happened to have what appears to be some serious college lover history with Poe Dameron? No, she didn’t want to poke that beehive.

Poe settles himself. Finn approaches him, soothing a hand over his hair. 

“It’s nothing, I just – she smelled like someone I used to know,” Poe stammers, unable to meet Rey’s eyes. 

Finn sniffs the air. “You mean –”

_ “Yes.” _ Poe looks to Finn, nodding. Finn’s mouth gapes open, and he looks over to Rey with newfound confusion. He almost looks hurt.

Holdo narrows her eyes at the three young Omegas.

“Whatever you’re all discussing, it’s not appropriate for right now. Get it together. Rey, I’ve got a job for you,” she motions for Rey to follow her. 

Rey doesn’t look at Poe or Finn as she follows the lavender-haired woman into her office.

“Do I need to be worried about any of that?” Holdo asks as she shuts the door. 

“No, no – it’s just – it’s fine,” Rey tells her before settling in to the chair opposite Holdo’s desk. “Really fine.”

“Riva called out sick, and we have absolutely nobody to cover her contract.” Holdo is shuffling through papers on her desk while looking worriedly at her computer screen. “Rey, you’re on suppressants, correct? I hate to ask, but it’s pertinent here.”

Rey nods quickly. “Yes, of course I am.”

“Alright, the gig is records keeping at Hosnian Prime Memorial Hospital. You shouldn’t – and won’t have to – go near any of the patient floors. There’s a separate entrance for you and everything.”

Rey blinks. That was the hospital she had been taken to only a few short months ago. The one where she knew Ben worked.  _ Ugh _ . 

“Right, Okay. Records keeping. Stay away from the patients.”  _ And the doctors _ , she thinks. “I can do that.”

“It should be pretty straightforward. They’re upgrading to an electronic medical records system. Or something. Got it?” Holdo is clearly distracted and short-staffed, so Rey nods and goes on her merry way. 

* * *

She takes the bus over and gets settled into the records room in the depths of the hospital. There’s a sliding glass window over a counter separating her desk from the hallway beyond. Various doctors and technicians come to her throughout the day, consulting or requesting records that haven’t yet been scanned into the electronic system.

It’s after her lunch break that what she was dreading would happen, happens. Rey smells him, that familiar scent filling her nostrils and seeping into her brain, _before_ she sees him, and this was honestly starting to get comical. Both the smelling part and the running into him part. What was her life like before Dr. Ben Solo plagued it?

He approaches the window of the records desk while totally engrossed in his tablet. He must be too busy and distracted to pay attention to his own sense of smell, because when he lifts his gaze to hers he looks utterly shocked. 

“Rey,” he states, in what’s hardly a greeting and more a statement of utter shock. “Are you –”

“I’m only here temporarily, and on strict orders not to enter any inpatient unit in this hospital. I’m fine.”

He exhales. “Just surprising.” 

Rey shrugs in response, looking down at the monitor on the desk as it pings.

“It’s not that I’m not happy to see you,” he adds after silence hangs heavy between them. They hadn’t really spoken in the past week. Rey had tried not to overthink it. Her first few days back at work had been busy. She also knew taking leave had affected his surgery schedule. 

“We don’t have to make this weird,” Rey snaps, pulling her gaze up to his. “You’re a busy guy. You’re an Alpha. You helped me through my heat. I know where we stand.”

He steps back from the counter, his eyes widening. He then seems to straighten himself and square his shoulders. 

“Where we stand,” he repeats back to her. “I see.”

“Did you need a record?” she asks, back to business. 

“A record. Right, yes,” he says, handing over the tablet with his patient’s information.

For a moment, their fingers brush. She feels electricity jolt through her, and she chalks it up to a shock from the tablet.

“Prior to 2005? Okay,” she groans, getting up from her chair. “It’ll take a second. We haven’t scanned those in yet.”

She walks back into the stacks of the record area and returns with a dusty old chart, handing it and the tablet back over to Ben – Dr. Solo.

“How are you?” he asks her, hovering by the counter for a moment. 

“Fine, why wouldn’t I be?” she asks without looking up from the monitor. There wasn’t anything even particularly interesting going on on the computer screen. She just didn’t want to have to keep looking at his dark eyes. Staring down at her like black holes she knew she would devastatingly get sucked into. 

“After your –”

“I’m fine,” she snaps again. She hadn’t been this grumpy before. Maybe she needed coffee. 

“Alright,” he seems to give up, and simply walks away without a farewell, taking the chart and the tablet with him.

* * *

She’s contracted at the hospital for the next two days. The temp she’s covering for is still out sick. Pneumonia, they think.

On the third day, Ben comes back down to the records room. 

“We need to talk,” he tells her. 

She sighs. That’s never a good set of words to hear from a guy who’s been knot-deep inside of you. 

“I’m busy,” she tells him as she click-clacks on her keyboard. 

“Take a break,” he says. 

She sighs loudly again. Glancing at the clock, she decides she can afford a quick pause. Stretch her legs.

Rey nods at him. Before she can stop him, he comes in around the side door entrance. She watches as he puts up the _“Away on Lunch”_ sign on the window and pulls down the blinds separating the receiving window and counter. She remains frozen, watching his quick, confident movements. 

“What are you –” she begins to ask, but then he’s on her, crowding her.

Ben backs her up against the stacks of medical charts. 

“Careful,” she whispers sharply, accusingly. 

He regards her for a moment, his eyes boring into hers with intensity.

“What are –” she starts to ask again, but is interrupted.

He growls as he grabs her by the back of her neck, his fingers tangling into her hair as he pulls her up and towards him.

She finds herself standing on her toes to follow this new development. His lips crash into hers like a fucking iceberg collision. She gasps in pain slightly. 

“Ben,” she breathes against his lips. He tastes incredible. He feels incredible.

He takes this as an indication to continue. He reaches down with his huge arms and lifts her by the ass up around his hips, and she obligingly wraps her legs around him.

He walks them away from the stacks and instead presses her up against the cement basement wall.

“Ben, I just –” she feels tears pool in her eyes as he continues to kiss her. He’s voracious about it, his movements the opposite of methodical or practical. Nothing surgical about this. He feels  _ desperate _ against her. 

She takes a moment to process before pressing her hands firmly on his chest and pushing him away, jumping down to the ground.

“No, I – we can’t, please,” she chokes out. He steps away in confusion, giving her space.

After a moment, it processes for him. “What, so you use me during a heat and that’s it?” he shouts. Everything he’d likely been holding back since their first encounter at the records counter seems to spill over now.

She sobs. “You know it’s not like that, everyone does that –”

“We’re not everyone!” he informs her.

“Well, I want to be!” she shouts back, frustrated. 

That’s all she wants to be. Like everyone. Back to her old self. A Beta. Live her normal life. Without losing days to uncontrollable horniness, to being open to feelings and desires she never even knew she had …  _ ugh _ . 

He inhales sharply. “Fine.” A pause. “I’m sorry for –” He motions at her tousled hair, her kiss-swollen lips. She nods in acknowledgment. 

“I need to get back to work,” she says softly. 

He leaves her, and she realizes now that after this temp contract, she’s not precisely sure when she’ll see him next. 

 

* * *

Rey stumbles into her apartment that night, dropping her bag by the front door and groaning loudly.

In her mail is the final hospital bill from her stay at Hosnian a few months back. She knew that her insurance was unlikely to retroactively cover her heat, despite the appeals she had filed explaining her situation. She had been dreading this particular bit of correspondence.

She opens the letter, aghast. The numbers were in the five digits. Itemized diagnosis code after diagnosis code, treatment numbers… and then:

**_FEES WAIVED BY PROVIDER._ **

What the hell did that mean?

Did it mean what she thought it meant?

Where she should feel gratitude, she feels fury. Hot, horrible fury. Her palms sweat with it. She throws the bill to the ground with a snarl.

It had been a long week. 

Rey curls up on her futon and tries to breathe, her chest ragged and heaving. 

Her body erupts into sobs. 

She wonders if, after enough time, your eyes just run dry as the desert. If that’s possible. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit hits the fan? You don't get to your mid-twenties and go through a biological change crisis without running into some emotional constipation, I guess?
> 
> \---
> 
> Moving forward, I can't guarantee I'll update this fic weekly, but I'll do my darndest. It's still a fic very near and dear to my heart that I will continue to write. Just can't make it a once-a-week sorta thing. <3
> 
> Thank you all so much for your support. It truly means the world. The few hours I get to sit down and write are the hours I cherish these days, where I can just tune out the craziness of the world and do something fun. And your feedback and positivity keeps me going, words can't describe. I've teared up reading some comments, and my heart bursts. Thank you, thank you. Stay terrific, y'all. <3

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first attempt at A/B/O. Because apparently... it's a hot thing right now. Particularly in the Reylo part of fandom. You could say it's... in heat.
> 
> Come find me on Tumblr: [arroways](https://arroways.tumblr.com/)  
> or Twitter: [@arr0ways](https://twitter.com/arr0ways)
> 
> While you're here, if you're looking for a *finished* modern Reylo AU of mine, you should go check out [Blame it on the Oxytocin](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13873560/chapters/31917228). If you haven't already. That's my shameless self-promotion. ;)
> 
> Updates will come depending on my availability IRL. Check my Tumblr and Twitter, sometimes I post fic schedules there! :)


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